


God Only Knows

by PersephoneA06



Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arthur Fleck trying his best, Arthur needs a hug, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Custody Battle, Daddy Issues, Dark, Everyone Has Issues, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fatherhood, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Harley? Maybe, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Literally making these tags up as I go along, Menstruation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Past Domestic Violence, Prostitution, Suicidal Thoughts, maybe not, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:01:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 25
Words: 155,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26149852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephoneA06/pseuds/PersephoneA06
Summary: What puts a smile on the face of a sad divorcee clown living in the slums of Gotham?His daughter, who looks at him as though he holds the world in his hands and strung up the stars only for her.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck & Penny Fleck, Arthur Fleck/Original Female Character(s), Joker (DCU)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 53





	1. Good Sunday

**Author's Note:**

> There will be vague hints in the beginning chapters of possible child abuse that will get explored more as the story goes on. Continue with discretion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel a need to throw in a special warning -- the journal entries I wrote in several times for Arthur in this story are, as it was brought to my attention, a stereotype of dyslexia. The way I wrote for him is NOT how people with dyslexia or learning disabilities write. I was not aware of Arthur Fleck having a learning disorder of any kind -- it was to my assumption that he was just illiterate without any learning impediments at all. I will not include any more journal writing in the future chapters (or I will limit it if it's necessary) but I WILL be keeping the chapters as is as an example of what NOT to do when portraying dyslexia in your own writing.

Today was Sunday – one of the better ones. The skip-in-his-step days. Paycheck day.  
  
Carrie days, with the ice cream parlor and laughter and piggyback rides and “I love you, Daddy” and someone to laugh at his jokes “because you can’t be nervous on stage” and superheroes and –  
  
“Good day today?” Randall asked curiously. “Can’t remember the last time I saw you smile so damn much.”  
  
He couldn’t say it wasn’t true. There was a fine line between the smile he showed to keep the money rolling in and the genuine joy he kept squared away in his home, reserved for the child and mother that made it a home, and – occasionally – Sophie, one hallway over, whenever she would have him.  
  
Arthur hadn’t given thought to the way his eyes fluttered closed and his mouth curled into a content smile. The makeup was in the process of being wiped away, but his hand had stilled for the moment as he got swept up in day-dreaming. Two hours.  
  
“Just feeling nice,” he replied. “Getting my daughter in a little bit.”  
  
“Ah, now I see. Pay day is also family day?”  
  
“The best day.”  
  
\- - - -  
  
The walk to and back from picking Carrie up always made Arthur a little embittered in the first few months since the custody split. When the situation was reversed – the silent walks home without his little companion, whom he wouldn’t see for another week – his mood was even worse. He hated having to take the twenty-minute walk home in one direction to drop off his stuff, change, and check on his mother, only to turn right back around and walk forty minutes to Gotham City Hall and wait for Jocelyn’s car. He hated having to walk past groups of homeless gents not once but twice, the next time with a small child, dressed in expensive clothing and carrying a backpack that more often than not contained expensive toys. The way they would leer at her made him close to doing something impulsive and stupid. By the time they would get back to the apartment, it would be nearly sundown and Arthur’s feet would sting so terribly that Carrie contents herself to sitting on the couch with him and Nana.  
  
There was nothing good on television for a child to watch past five o’clock. She wouldn’t complain.  
  
He hated that Jocelyn was so high and mighty that she wouldn’t allow him to be spotted at her house, and likewise refused to be photographed near his slum of an apartment. That she made her own daughter walk through what was known to be a crime magnet. That she was always a little late to drop her off, but a little early to pick her up.  
  
He walked anyway.  
  
If it was the one condition she had – that he walked a little extra than what he wanted – to let him have their daughter for the week, he’d do it every day.  
  
Today, he sat on the bottom step of Gotham City Hall, watching a cluster of frenzied ants march towards a half-eaten pink sucker near the railing. His attention alternated between them and the chain of flowers he was inefficiently twisting into a crown. He was sure it was too big for Carrie’s head, but then again she had a rather large head at birth, so he didn’t want to chance it. Occasionally a knot would come loose or he would struggle with one flower for so long that all the petals would fall off. Still, he lauded the effort.  
  
He was surprised that the car arrived before he finished the crown. And maybe the slightest twinge disappointed because he was going to surprise her with it. But all of a sudden, the back door was open and a joyful shriek of _“Daddy!”_ made his face split into a grin.  
  
“How is my little Peanut?” he asked, not noticing his ex-wife step out of the car. He was too invested in his daughter’s tight hug and her little arms thrown around his neck. It was only when the driver’s door closed that he let go and opened his eyes, but put his attention on Carrie. “I got a surprise for you.”  
  
The crown evidently was too big for her head, drooping in the back over her low-hanging pigtails. She laughed.  
  
“Arthur, I need to speak to you.”  
  
It wasn’t lost on him, the way she held Carrie’s red backpack by the small strap on the top, with her thumb and forefinger. She seemed almost comically offended by the dirty, partially torn bag. Carrie went to retrieve it and put it on proudly as Arthur stood up and took a few steps towards his ex-wife.  
  
“Yes?” He didn’t mean to sound tense. His week was about to actually get better and he was anxious to get Carrie back to the apartment so he could relax.  
  
“Keith invited me to Albany for a two-week vacation. He’s arranging for me to have dinner with his parents on the twenty-fifth.”  
  
A twinge of panic shot through him. Albany was three hours away. The twenty-fifth? That was his week to have Carrie. No. No, _no, no –  
_  
“We’re leaving the Friday before,” she continued. “I need you to take Carrie until I get back. Could you manage that?”  
  
He very nearly screamed “YES” in her face when the idea fully processed in his brain. Once it did, he looked down at his little daughter, so dutifully holding his hand and looking up at him expectantly, and then looked back at Jocelyn with a firm nod.  
  
“Yes, of course I’ll take her. Of course. When, uh, when will you be back?”  
  
“I’m not sure. We were thinking the sixth.”  
  
A smirk involuntarily crept on his face. Too good to be true, too good.  
  
“That’s a little jumping the gun, don’t you think?” he had to ask. “Two weeks stuck in a house together? What if you hate his parents?”  
  
There was a time where Jocelyn’s eye rolls and scoff were playful, brought on by Arthur’s purposefully corny jokes. Now they made his gut twist in discomfort. Just how stupid did she think he truly was?  
  
“Please don’t be dense, Arthur. He has a penthouse in Utica if we need our space.”  
  
She turned her attention away from him, to the antsy child next to him. He felt her little hand slip out of his.  
  
“You have your presents?” she asked.  
  
“Mm-hmm.”  
  
“All three of them, from the both of us?”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“I love you,” Jocelyn said. “Happy early birthday, darling. I’ll call you on Wednesday.”  
  
“I love you, Mom.”  
  
The woman pecked her daughter’s cheek, stood up, gave Arthur a curt nod, and returned to the car. They, in turn, walked off.  
  
“So I hear you have a birthday coming up in a few days,” Arthur said. They were at a crosswalk, neither particularly relishing the walk ahead. “How old are you turning now? Fifteen? Sixteen?”  
  
She bit her lip and giggled.  
  
“What, too high?” he inquired. They began walking. “Five, then.”  
  
“Eight, Daddy.”  
  
“Are you sure? I thought you were still in diapers.”  
  
“No!” she laughed.  
  
Eight. His heart hammered. What happened to the time where she was being swaddled and rocked to sleep in one arm? Didn’t Jocelyn just tell him she was pregnant yesterday? Did he still have the ultrasound scan of when she was eleven weeks and the size of a kidney bean? Being in the apartment with Jocelyn and the baby was the only time he ever remembered feeling … normal. His walks back without Carrie were lonesome and swathed with heart-rending longing for his little girl. Now he was about to be the father of an eight-year-old.  
  
“Do you want me to carry your bag?” he offered. It took him a while to notice, but it seemed bulkier than usual. She shook her head. “What’s in it?”  
  
“Presents from Mom and Keith. They said to wait ‘til my birthday to open them.”  
  
Arthur held back a sigh of derision. He tried to hold back on speaking ill of Jocelyn’s partners in front of Carrie, who had a habit of spilling the beans to both parents on what gossip was on hand. But Keith Robbins was younger, richer, and more handsome than Arthur. By default, Arthur hated his guts. From Carrie’s weekly reports, he was cordial enough, but didn’t particularly care for her to call him Dad. That settled his stomach a little to know. And he most certainly didn’t want their presents being opened to make his own look bad in comparison. Toys were _expensive_.  
  
“I was just thinking, what if we kept a secret? We could open those presents tonight, and that could give you something to play with until your party. There’s going to be a lot of other nice presents there.”  
  
“I like that idea,” she decided.  
  
Maybe Arthur spent half of his last paycheck on buying presents for Carrie. Maybe the other half went to a birthday cake that would hopefully be delivered to the house on Tuesday night by Ms. Dumond. And maybe he was planning on letting her skip school to have a day just to them. Who really had to know?  
  
“How’s your mother?” he asked. They were halfway to his building and their feet were beginning to feel the consequences of the walk in the low of their legs.  
  
“She’s good,” Carrie conceded. He could hear the puff of tiredness in her little voice. “She’s been spending a lot of time with Keith.”  
  
The name set Arthur’s teeth on edge.  
  
“And how is he?”  
  
“He’s okay, I guess. He and Mom have parties at the house but not fun ones like on TV – they’re really quiet and all the people smell old. They drink too much champagne and talk about numbers a lot.”  
  
She always counted the massive number of stairs under her breath. He remembered when she was six and always stopped after the twentieth step. Now she got up to forty.  
  
“Are we almost to the apartment, Daddy?” she whined. Their palms were coated in sweat and the energy for conversation had long since passed.  
  
“Almost there, Peanut,” he puffed. “Just another block.”  
  
Whenever he would hear his daughter’s soft whine of unease, it gave him an urge to give Jocelyn an earful. It had been simpler a few years ago, when her ego wasn’t as massive and his apartment not as far.  
  
When they got to the apartment, they scarcely noticed the low air conditioning. Carrie splayed out on the couch and Arthur set her bag in her room. It was already close to dark out and it was a school night.  
  
“Is that my darling grandchild?”  
  
Carrie raised her head so slightly off the cushion, having no energy left to look at her grandmother.  
  
“Hi, Nana.”  
  
And she was out like a light.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Carrie always looked a little awkward being put to sleep in a very mundane, very adult bedroom. Every once in a while he would get photos of Carrie playing in her room at Jocelyn’s house – very pink, filled with expensive toys and a spacious, four-poster bed, overflowing with stuffed animals. Arthur had conceded to the court’s request of a slightly larger apartment, so she could have a room to sleep in, and he’d pulled many strings to get it. But once his mother fell ill, in need of a son to take care of her, his hands were tied. Some nights, he would become so nervous thinking of the bills, of his little girl, that he would start laughing.  
  
Laughing.  
  
Howling.  
  
_I’m the nice guy and I’m being punished for it.  
_  
“I can sleep on the couch, Daddy,” Carrie insisted, in a voice so meek that his heart swirled. The quilt was tucked up to her chin. She looked comically small. Clutching her old rabbit, Frankie, she looked far too young to be eight. “This is your room.”  
  
He gave her a soft smile. They were reserved for a special few.  
  
“I feel bad that Nana had to take your room,” he said. “And I’m comfortable on the couch. I’ll be up for a while, anyway. I might go to the comedy club, if you think you could be a good girl and go to sleep.”  
  
“Nana’s breathing machine is scary,” she conceded. “It’s like someone else is in the apartment with us.”  
  
“It is a little loud, I suppose. But ya know what?” He leaned in closer to her, his voice dropping. “There’s nobody else here besides us three. And if there is, you and I can be superheroes and beat ‘em up together, to protect Nana. Do you think you could do that?”  
  
She nodded softly.  
  
“Can you stay in here just a little longer?” she asked.  
  
“Do you want me to read?”  
  
She nodded firmly, undoing the covers so she could reach for the collection of books under his nightstand. He had to laugh.  
  
_Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.  
_  
“You have a bad day, Peanut?” he wondered as she gave him space on the bed to lie down, as well. She shrugged. “Alright. _‘I went to sleep with gum in my mouth, and now there’s gum in my hair. And when I got out of bed this morning, I tripped on the skateboard, and by mistake, I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running. I could tell, it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’.”  
_  
As he turned the page, Carrie rested her hand and chin on his shoulder.  
  
“Do you have bad days, too?” she wondered.  
  
He faltered. _All the time_ , he nearly said. _Every day was a bad day before you were born._  
  
“Sometimes,” he considered.  
  
“Was today a bad day?”  
  
“Not really. Some Sundays are good days.”  
  
He strained to look at her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a big blue eye and ringlets of blonde hair. _Poor thing looked just like her mother._  
  
Not that a little girl looking like Arthur would be any better, and he knew it.  
  
“You don’t have to read if you don’t want to,” she conceded.  
  
“I can keep going if you want. I don’t mind.”  
  
She shook her head softly against him.  
  
“Just stay in here until I fall asleep, please.”  
  
He knew there was some hint of bias in his opinion, but that didn’t negate the fact that his daughter was the sweetest little girl in the world. He did stay for a while, until her breathing tickled his neck and the grip she had on his shoulder slacked. With a kiss on her head, he stood up and flicked the light off before leaving. When he heard a gasp and a whine of fright, he flicked the lights on again. At the foot of the bed, their inoffensive, overweight cat, Auggie, was pawing at Carrie’s feet. Carrie stated at him, looking quite frightened.  
  
“It’s alright, Peanut,” Arthur insisted, taken aback by her sudden fright. “It’s just Auggie. Try to go to sleep.”  
  
The lights went out again.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Pogo’s always had a certain air that reminded Arthur of home, but he was never able to put his finger on it. There wasn’t much difference there than the outside world. People still left him alone. The comedians made him feel almost intimidated; even the most lowbrow of jokes was better than his corny book. He’d had eight years to rehearse his terrible dad jokes and none of them would get even a sympathy laugh from anybody besides his daughter. Some of the people were just as jaded and embittered as he was.  
  
Maybe that was it. Maybe these people were filtering their fears through humor, too.  
  
He thanked the young waitress at his table for setting down a glass of water. As he pulled a few spare dollars from his wallet, the man at the microphone eyed him.  
  
“Sir, I see you sitting all by yourself,” the man said. _Shit._ Arthur’s panic was too quick to his face for him to register. “Yes, you right in front of me. Since it’s singles’ night, I’ll help you out. You a married man?”  
  
What? The man was talking so fast, Arthur barely understood. A puff of nervous laughter was caught like a bubble in his throat. No, no, _no –_  
  
“I was,” he struggled. Wow, his mouth was dry. He gripped the cool water.  
  
“Divorce? Ah, that’s a shame – sometimes. Y’know, I was married once myself. Lemme tell ya, that woman was like a three-ring circus. First came the engagement ring, next the wedding ring. Then the next six years was suffering.”  
  
A shrill cackle pierced the low-register, cynical chuckles in the room. It took Arthur a few seconds to realize that it was his own voice.  
  
“That’s a good laugh you got, pal. Sounds just like my ex-wife.”  
  
The laugh was more lowkey now, blending in seamlessly with everyone else.  
  
He wished he hadn’t laughed at all.  
  
“What’s your name, pal?”  
  
“Um …” Lord, his throat was dry. “Arthur Fleck.”  
  
“Fleck?” the man repeated, shaking his head in obvious derision. Arthur felt his face warm. “I’d divorce you, too.”  
  
The laughter was sparse. Arthur felt the eyes burn into the back of his skull. He kept his eyes on his hand, where his finger was tap, tap, tapping away.  
  
“Fleck. I hope you didn’t curse any kids with that name. Bein’ a teenager is hard enough.”  
  
_~~Stop, stop, stop, my Carrie is perfect, fuck you and your so-called jokes.  
~~_  
He coughed uncomfortably and made a beeline for the restroom, shrouded in the laughter firing at him from every angle. The bathroom door all but slammed against the wall.  
  
_You shouldn’t have said anything, you stupid fuck, why do you always expect people won’t laugh at your ugly face, your ugly name, **you stupid, STUPID –  
**_  
The water was cool against his face. It grounded him a little bit, made him feel the chilled air of the bathroom, the reverberating laughter in the lounge. Drips of water trailed from his forehead to his chin.  
  
There were no paper towels to dry his face.  
  
So his skull slammed against the wall, again and again until he could feel the warm, slippery smear of blood ruin their precious tile.  
  
Until his tears simmered and he laughed so hard it burned from the inside.  
  
\- - - -  
  
“Hi, Mom.”  
  
He shrugged his jacket off and tossed it to the empty chair near her. She was sitting on the couch, her attention alternating from the low buzz of the television to her disheveled, disgruntled-looking son.  
  
“Happy, what happened to your head?” she gasped  
  
“I’m fine, Mom. Just slipped on some trash.”  
  
“Happy, come here.”  
  
He sighed, feeling a lump of guilt override any attempt at protesting. Worrying his mother was despicable. The way she stared at the gash of dried blood on his head made him close his eyes. He couldn’t look at her furrowed brows, her wide brown eyes, her thinned lips.  
  
“You hit your head again,” she concluded. “I thought we discussed that.”  
  
“We did,” he conceded, standing up and heading to the kitchen for a paper towel. “Several times. They laughed at me tonight. I couldn’t take it.”  
  
“Happy ...” He could hear the creaks of the floorboard, and for a second he worried that it might wake Carrie. In the reflection of the toaster, he saw his mother sneak up behind him. “Everyone gets laughed at.”  
  
He sighed and blotted the wet napkin against the knot on his forehead, holding back a hiss at the chilling contact.  
  
“I don’t understand it sometimes, Mom,” he said lowly. “When will it be my turn to laugh?”  
  
A soft hand rested on the arm he had planted on the counter. Her thumb ran in soothing circles.  
  
“You make Carrie and me laugh.”  
  
Fortunately, the gash was close enough to his temple that it could easily be concealed by his hair. As his mother pulled open their medicine cabinet and took out a packet of bandages, she said, “What did they say, Happy?”  
  
“I shouldn’t have let it get to me, I know,” he sighed. She sliced off small squares of medical tape. “It was open mic night and the man on stage … brought Carrie into the jokes. Said I shouldn’t even have kids if my name is so terrible. He said she would hate me when she gets older for giving her such a rotten name.”  
  
She tutted. He didn’t see the small grin tugging at her lips as she pressed a thin layer of cotton to his head.  
  
“Carrie Fleck is better than Carrie Soucie.”  
  
He felt his mother’s hands delicately squeeze his arms. If she squeezed too hard, his bones would scatter to the wind in a brittle pile.  
  
“How are you feeling, Happy?” she asked.  
  
“I’m … _fine_ , Mom. Really.”  
  
“You say that,” she tutted, beginning to move back to the living room. Internally he hoped she wouldn’t be much longer. He was very tired.  
  
When she was gone, he heard the faint creak of the hallway floor. Standing at the impasse between the living room and kitchen was Carrie, nervously fidgeting from one foot to the next and holding Frankie in a fist by her side.  
  
“Hey, Peanut,” he greeted. When he noticed the tear marks on her face, reflected in the dim kitchen light, his stomach flipped in panic. Suddenly he was moving toward her, grabbing her arm and crouching. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Don’t be mad,” she sniffled. Her little hand motioned for him to lean forward, as her watery eyes set on Nana. He leaned in. _“I wet the bed.”_  
  
He was taken aback. It hit him, then – the ammonia smell. She followed timidly behind him, seeming to become smaller by the second once he turned around to look at her as he reached the door. He saw a small wet stain in the middle of the bed.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said meekly.  
  
“It’s alright,” he said, beginning to tug at the sheet without taking the pillows and blankets off with it. “What happened, Peanut? Bad dream?”  
  
She nodded, avoiding his eye. He assumed, rather worriedly, that she thought he would be cross with her. She hadn’t had any sort of accident since she was a toddler. Jocelyn had put the fear of God in her over ruining a mattress. Arthur, although the more sympathetic parent, was forced to be sidelined once Jocelyn started bringing in more money than him.  
  
“Hey,” he said quietly. A hand rested on her shoulder. The other held the soiled grey sheet. “It’s okay. Do you wanna talk about it?”  
  
She shook her head, still avoiding his face.  
  
“If you wanna get out your other favorite pajamas, I can run some bath water and –”  
  
“No,” she said, quickly but quietly. “I’m just tired. I’ll take a bath in the morning.”  
  
“Alright. Just give me a few minutes, okay? I’ll find a towel for you to lie on. Can you give me a smile, Peanut?”  
  
Her eyes darted to his face a few times. When he did the silly face – sticking his fingers in his mouth and forcing a smile – he saw her struggle to hold in a puff of laughter.

It was as good a Sunday as any before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Joker canonically takes place in the 1980s, I got the image in my mind of Betty Gilpin from GLOW as Jocelyn. I don't know why but it fits perfectly.  
> https://uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/gettyimages-800018022.jpg
> 
> Also I want to wrap Carrie in a blanket and bubble wrap.  
> https://tr.web.img2.acsta.net/medias/nmedia/00/02/43/30/sam3.jpg


	2. Mr. and Mrs. Fleck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am aware that Arthur is a bit of a creep and a danger to himself and others. Leave me alone, this is cute.

_They met while they were attending GCC in 1965. They were both trying to knock out their general classes before moving on to University. Jocelyn wanted to major in Psychology at NYU. Arthur was undecided.  
_  
 _Their meeting was entirely by chance. She was reading in the library, watching the clock for one of her classes to begin. He just happened to be meandering around, looking for the section on tawny owls, when his eyes landed on thick blonde bottle curls set to a striped shirt and small white shorts.  
_  
 _He had frozen.  
_  
 ~~ _Don’t talk to her.  
_~~  
 _“Do you know where I could find the, uh … the nature section?” he asked, feeling slightly guilty that she jumped in surprise and turned around to see him.  
_  
 _“Almost gave me a heart attack,” she laughed, pressing a hand to her chest. “They’re on the third shelf, in the back left corner.”  
_  
 _“Good. Thank you.”  
_  
 _She turned back around. He never made it to the nature books. He didn’t know how much time he spent standing behind her, just staring.  
_  
 _Fantasizing.  
_  
 _At first she seemed oblivious to his new routine. There were only so many times he could ask where a certain section of books were before she would catch on. They never spoke of anything else, aside from a simple hello and, eventually, exchanging names. He didn’t think she was so dumb. He just hoped she wouldn’t notice his desperation to talk to her.  
_  
 _It kept on for two months. One day in December, “Jocelyn, are the nature books still in the back?”, and she turned around and handed him a small, leather-bound book.  
_  
 _“Merry Christmas, Arthur.”  
_  
 _He nodded, a bit bemused, and opened it. On the inside cover, in curly handwriting, was a note.  
_  
 _I know your game, Mr. Fleck. You’re not that clever. Talking more might help your anxiety. Or writing. Merry Christmas, from Jocelyn Soucie._  
 _P.S. – my favorite restaurant is Carnegie Deli, on 7th Avenue. Just in case you ever needed to know.  
_  
 _Arthur talked his mother’s ear off about the girl in the library, swatting away her disapproving tuts about her boy chasing after some bottle-blonde. He wrote and wrote in the journal. Jokes. Cartoons. Jocelyn Fleck. Jocelyn Soucie-Fleck. Mrs. Arthur Fleck. Mr. and Mrs. Fleck. Dr. Jocelyn Fleck.  
_  
 _He plucked up the courage somewhere buried down to ask her to Carnegie Deli on Christmas Eve. She got a turkey burger and he politely went without, not feeling too hungry for deli meat. She accepted the invitation for him to escort her home, but declined a goodnight kiss, fretting over her turkey and cheese breath. He didn’t mind.  
_  
 _Next time.  
_  
“Hey, Arthur.”  
  
He jumped a little, startled out of his daydreaming by Sophie Dumond. She had a small basket of pink clothes on her hip and smiled at him.  
  
“Hello, Sophie.”  
  
“Are you using the washer right now?”  
  
“Uh, yeah. Carrie had a sort of accident – you know how kids are.”  
  
“Ugh, I know.” Her hand reached in the basket and pulled out one of the many pink materials. On one was a large purple stain. “GiGi got grape juice all over the ballerina outfit.”  
  
“A cotton ball and rubbing alcohol helps with stains. I should know.” He let out a small, squirrely laugh. “I used to get hurt a lot as a kid.”  
  
“I’ll have to try that,” she nodded. “Um, about Carrie’s cake – I know it’s thirteen dollars, but, um, I only have seven dollars on me right now. I don’t get paid until Friday, and I had to buy GiGi antibiotics for this cough she’s had –”  
  
“Don’t worry,” he interjected. “Don’t worry about it. I put a down payment on the cake when I ordered it.”  
  
“You can put a down payment on a cake?” she asked, perplexed. He would never get tired of the way her eyebrows scrunched together, the way she showed her teeth when she was confused. He nodded.  
  
“Surprisingly, yeah.”  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
They stood in silence for a few minutes, listening to the water sloshing around in the old, clunky washer, rocking from side to side.  
  
“The landlord really needs to get a new washer and dryer,” Sophie said.  
  
“He does.”  
  
Arthur was thankful for the familiar buzz of the washer’s end cycle. If he stared at Sophie Dumond for too long, he would get a nervous fit of giggles. They hadn’t really gone on a date yet and weren’t at the level where he could call her his girlfriend, but he fantasized.  
  
Fantasized. This time he would make sure things go right.  
  
“Hey, Arthur, um …” He closed the dryer door and turned to her. She had her hands stuffed in her pockets and was biting her lip in contemplation. “I was thinking … since I get paid on Friday, do you maybe wanna go get something to eat Sunday night? I know every other Sunday is pretty bad for you because you gotta give Carrie back to her mom, so I was thinking … do you wanna go to Twin Donuts on Sunday?”  
  
He froze. Would he have the money for that after Carrie’s birthday? He still had to buy decorations, and he would feel guilty if Sophie had to pay for the both of them.  
  
 _Your first date, she ate, you didn’t. You can do it again._  
  
“Um, sure.”  
  
He tried to play it cool with a soft smile.  
  
“Alright then,” she said. “It’s a date. How about eight-thirty?”  
  
A date.  
  
A date.  
  
“Uh, yeah. That should work.”  
  
\- - -  
  
It was always interesting, Carrie’s birthday parties. The children gallivanting around the apartment seemed much less bothered by his presence than the parents who left them there.  
  
Arthur took a great deal of pride in planning her parties. He’d done it every year since her first. She had confided in him more than once that sometimes she liked how close-knit his parties were for her. Birthdays at Mom’s house were fine, she supposed, but never as much fun. The presents were mostly clothes. Most of the guests were Mom’s friends, and she wouldn’t even really call them that – more like business partners. Mom always tried to bake a cake, but they always turned out dry and sugarless, like pound cakes. “You’ll thank me when you’re older,” she would always say.  
  
Arthur snickered, imagining the horror on Jocelyn’s face at seeing their daughter dig into the Fudgie the Whale cake he ordered.  
  
“Arthur, look at this!”  
  
Sophie was marching toward him, holding a packet of what looked to be orange and red letters.  
  
“An orange and red banner would be perfect for her.”  
  
“And why is that?” he asked.  
  
“She looks best with warm colors – warm personality, y’know?”  
  
He had to agree.  
  
“Did you find any balloons yet?”  
  
“Mm … I might skip out on balloons this year. My anxiety medication isn’t working, and Ma’s already fidgety enough. I don’t think I could handle all the popping and …”  
  
“I get it,” Sophie sighed. “GiGi’s last birthday, I blew up fifty balloons. I found the little bastards around my apartment for months after.”  
  
“I do need these, though.” He took a packet of long balloons from the shelf. “I could make balloon animals for the kids … wait, don’t I already have these?”  
  
 _Yes, you do, left over from the children’s hospital because half of them turned out shitty._  
  
 _No, buy them anyway, do you want to ruin your daughter’s birthday, just buy them, BUY THEM_  
  
“Arthur!”  
  
His palm was at his forehead before he knew it, hitting aggressively and repeatedly. Sophie put a hand on his offending arm. He was sure she felt his muscles loosen, and he put his arm down. Fortunately the store was nearly vacant, aside from the uninterested young cashier chewing on a stick of gum. A flare of anger burned hot in Arthur’s face when he saw the concern in Sophie’s eyes.  
  
Why did he always have to ruin a good evening?  
  
“Arthur, I can pay for the balloons,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”  
  
“No, I’m fine,” he gritted, closing his eyes again. He opened them when he knew he could force a confident smile. “I’m sure I have some in my bag at home. What self-respecting clown doesn’t carry balloons, right?”  
  
They both laughed softly.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said meekly, avoiding her eye. The balloons were put back on the shelf.  
  
“You’re fine,” she insisted.  
  
\- - -  
  
 _December 18th, 1968 was a whirlwind of the most extreme emotions Arthur had ever felt._  
  
 _Chief among them was fear.  
  
_ _It happened so fast, the only indications of his own steady breaths were the dangerous chill outside manifesting his breaths into the physical form, and that he wasn't dead. Somehow, **somehow** he'd gotten through 'with this ring, I thee wed' without crying or cackling right in Jocelyn's or the priest's face. It had threatened him with an appearance as he saw her, in all her shrouded, ethereal being packaged in a $40 alabaster-white satin gown. Lifting the veil from her face, Arthur found common ground with Jocelyn's father on one key point: he really did not deserve her. Her beauty, her kindness, her choice of companionship._  
  
 _Would his mother really disown him for marrying the love of his life? Why did she choose **him,** in all his peculiarities and horror-struck anxieties, when she could've had a Humphrey Bogart? How could he ever make a good husband for a woman who deserved the world, when he could barely get their rent paid on time? Was she regretting it already? Oh god, oh god, what would he do if they had children? Did she even want children? What if they turned out like –_  
  
 _“I can hear you worrying,” Jocelyn had said, smiling at him with all those perfectly white teeth. The knot in his stomach twisted harder, more painful. Her hand squeezed his tighter, and he became acutely aware that they were being watched – the elated, tearful eyes of her friends and family, the earnest disapproving eyes of his mother. “Just relax for now. We just got married.”  
  
They just got married. He just got married. Married to a blonde beauty that should only logistically exist in the confines of his head. Was it a joke? Were these people watching him sway to Elvis by himself -- strangers paying to see the freak show attraction? Giggles, the Dancing Moron.  
  
A smear of glossy peach stuck onto his bottom lip where it got caught between her own tight smile. The flutter of mascara-armored lashes under his left eye grounded him to the present. Skin on skin. His fingers finding that soft dip that was the bottom of her shoulder blade, teased to modesty by the thin satin of her dress.  
  
 **You're in your wedding dress. You're here. I'm here. You're real. You're real and I'm real and oh god, I wish I could find a word to tell you I love you. You're my wife and I love you. I'm your husband and I love you.**  
_  
 _“Are you psychic now?” he whispered, muffling a laugh in his throat. If it came on too strong, he would burst into tears. “What else am I thinking, Mrs. Fleck?”  
_  
 _ **‘If I’m seen with someone new, don’t be blue. Don’t you be blue.’**  
_  
 _“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” she admitted. “I just know I can’t wait to spend my life with you, Mr. Fleck.”_  
  
“Daddy!”  
  
“Peanut!” he greeted, outstretching his arms for her. She happily rushed to his embrace, holding a large sheet of paper in her left hand. “What’s that you got?”  
  
“It’s a drawing I made, ‘cause I got done with my homework early. See look, that’s you, and Nana, and I’m holding Auggie.”  
  
“Why did you draw me as Carnival?” he asked, tracing a finger over the flurry of green scribbles. “I mean, you drew Carnival very well, but –”  
  
“You look happiest when you’re Carnival.”  
  
He hesitated to face her. His hand hovered just over her shoulder – her yellow-clothed shoulder. She had chosen the nicest yellow dress she had, “No real reason. I just wanted to feel pretty.” There was earnestness in her eyes, her innocent, big blue eyes. It warmed him and pierced through him at the same time.  
  
 _She’s going to kill you one day and you’re going to let her.  
_  
“Oh, Peanut,” he said, pulling her into a one-armed hug. “I’m happiest when you’re around.”  
  
He let go and stood up, but bent slightly to her level.  
  
“And ya know what? When we get home, I’m putting this straight on the freezer, where Nana can see it, too.”  
  
“And Auggie?”  
  
“Oh, _especially_ Auggie.”  
  
He’d gotten the fat cat for her last Christmas. Jocelyn tore into him over the phone about Carrie bringing bright orange cat hair into her pristine house, but Arthur took it in one ear and out the other. They’d had too good of a holiday for him to really care, and the look of complete adoration Carrie had given him, Nana, and the kitten nearly convinced him to go back to the animal clinic and buy ten more cats that they couldn’t afford. And he’d already grown too fond of the little mongrel for him to just be sent back. He couldn’t break Carrie’s heart so callously. It didn’t come easy for Arthur the way it did for Jocelyn.  
  
“I forgot to open my presents from Mom and Keith last night,” Carrie mentioned on the walk back to the apartment.  
  
“Well do you wanna open them when we get home?”  
  
“Mm, sure.”  
  
“Did you draw them a picture, too? I’m sure Mom would appreciate it.”  
  
 _Stop lying to her._  
  
“I’ll do that next week. I thought I shouldn’t because you don’t like Keith very much … I don’t either.”  
  
Once the flutter of relief swept over him – for once, he has something that Keith would never have, and it was better than anything that Keith had – a twinge of panic set on. Carrie loved nearly unconditionally, not without good reason did she hate.  
  
“Why is that?”  
  
“He’s _boring,”_ she spat. He laughed when he looked down to see her scrunch her face at the sinister word. The permanent knot in his stomach settled slightly. “All he does is go to work and take naps in Mom’s room, so then I’m left alone in the house with nobody to talk to.”  
  
Inexplicably, the mention of naps made Arthur uneasy. Even if he had little room left in his heart for his ex-wife, Carrie was an adventurous little girl, but too young to grasp the concept of why her mother was suddenly always so tired. A clear picture intruded into his head of Carrie and her dolls, waiting for a mother that would never be as interested in her daughter than her multiple flings. He shook his head.  
  
“I thought you liked being alone,” he countered. “Don’t you have a lot of stuffed animal friends to play with? Who was the one you were telling me about – the big teddy bear?”  
  
“Sawyer’s alright, but I miss Mom taking me to the park,” she sighed. The sound of it was so heartbreaking; it got Arthur’s rage simmering. “I don’t know why she likes Keith more than me. He’s just boring.”  
  
“I’m sure she doesn’t like him more than you,” he lied. It was the best he had. “I remember when she was pregnant with you, it was the happiest I’d ever seen her. And when you came out, she smiled so wide, I thought her face was gonna be stuck that way.”  
  
Carrie looked up at him, nose scrunched.  
  
“Didn’t I come out with a funny-shaped head?”  
  
“A _big_ funny-shaped head. That’s where I got Peanut from.”  
  
She’d heard the story millions of times before. Every birthday, he had to embarrass her in front of her friends and pull out the picture to prove her misfortune. It curved into a normal round shape after a few hours but Arthur had been so panic-stricken that he took as many photos of the squalling baby as the camera roll would allow.  
  
An amiable silence fell in between them. They weaved through the blocks from school to home shortly. He stuffed one hand into his jacket pocket (Gotham was never not cold, and the forecast on the radio at the store said it would storm tonight), the other enveloping Carrie’s hand. She occasionally skipped a few steps ahead of him, only to be gently yanked back to avoid running into people in front of them.  
  
“What’s my party going to be like?” she asked once they reached the front door.  
  
“I dunno,” he lied, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. She skipped up the stairs to their door.  
  
“You do, too. Is it gonna be superhero themed? Joe Marshall is coming tomorrow – he said he got me Hulk hands, and his mom can help chaperone if you need.”  
  
“Mm, maybe.”  
  
“Star Wars themed? I already have an idea for Halloween – you could be Han Solo and I could be Chewbacca.”  
  
He tried to suppress a high-pitched giggle at the mental image of his eight-year-old walking around in a fur suit.  
  
“Talk to Nana about it when it gets nearer to October.”  
  
“Oh!” she exclaimed, taking great, energetic leaps into their living room. She looked up at him with wide, electric blue eyes. “That could be your birthday present!”  
  
“Oh really? Well I’ll _pretend_ to act surprised.”  
  
“I’m gonna go to my room,” she announced, rushing down the hall. “Gotta open my presents from Mom and Keith!”  
  
“Say hi to your grandma first!” he called out. Distantly he made out a hurried _“Hi, Nana!”_ and a slam of the door before his mother could get Carrie’s name fully out.  
  
 _Kids_.  
  
He eyed his journal sitting on the coffee table. The social worker advised him to write about his week and his feelings – something about so she could observe his health. In the front cover, he’d taped a picture of Carrie; his favorite picture, one year old and clutching a sunflower. His heart would shudder in absolute awe. How could someone as hideous and unstable as him have created something so wonderful? He could already envision tonight's journal entry, and how pleased it would make his social worker.  
  
 _ **Carrie keeps me on my toes, I stay so busy with her I can forget the out side exists and I feel as close to happy as the ~~univre~~ the world allows me to be.  
She makes me feel close to the Normals. She's hard work but the best part of the days.**_  
  
Auggie was perched on the kitchen counter, licking at his leg. As Arthur ran a hand through the shock of orange fur, the cat brushed his sandpaper tongue over Arthur’s arm.  
  
“You’re the favorite in the house,” he said to the oblivious cat. An ear flitted. “Did you know that?”  
  
\- - -  
  
“That’s gross,” Carrie scoffed. There was a special airing of _The Kid_ on television later that night. The family was huddled together, watching Charlie Chaplin roll a pancake around an entire stick of butter for breakfast as his little boy guzzled down syrup.  
  
“Calm down,” Arthur smiled, petting her hair. Her head was resting on his leg, her own legs on her grandmother. “Poor people like to eat, too, y’know. You chewed on orange peels when you were teething.”  
  
“I met Charlie Chaplin once,” Nana said. Both of them looked at her curiously, staring specifically at her rapt gaze on the television. “Before he left for Switzerland.”  
  
“Why did you never tell me this?” Arthur asked. “I watched Chaplin all the time when I was young, remember? I would’ve loved to have heard about that.”  
  
“It just never occurred to me to tell you, I guess. I was seventeen and some girl friends had taken me on a vacation to Los Angeles. We were at the premiere of City Lights when that … theater manager interrupted the show to talk about the auditorium. Poor Mr. Chaplin was so angry. The picture was so beautiful, too, that the audience was livid that it got interrupted.”  
  
“What’s that noise?” Carrie inquired, beginning to sit up in curiosity. Her eyes traveled to the ceiling.  
  
Speaking of interrupted.  
  
Nana and Arthur followed her gaze. Arthur’s ears picked up on the noise and his heartbeat got caught up in his throat. The familiar knot of anxiety tightened in his low stomach. The young couple upstairs was busy, and probably not decently dressed enough for him to ask them to quiet down their job on the bedsprings.  
  
 _Oh shit oh no oh shit, my little girl can hear you, please stop, I can’t have that talk with her, please stop, **STOP**_  
  
“Um … they’re probably redecorating the apartment,” he answered quickly, scrambling to get up and turn the volume up on the TV. “I can hear furniture moving. Decorating takes a long time, y’know?”  
  
He stood up, about to sit down with them on the couch again, when –  
  
“I think they’re having sex.”  
  
“Carrie Frances!” Nana exclaimed, swatting at Carrie’s feet.  
  
“What?” she asked, jumping into a curled position on the couch, looking between her thin-lipped Nana and her frozen, pale-faced father. “What?”  
  
What the hell did she just say?  
  
 _“Please.”_ It was the woman, curling her voice into a high-pitched whine that made Arthur’s stomach churn. _“Please don’t stop.”_  
  
“They’re _definitely_ having sex,” he heard Carrie mutter, her eyes still transfixed on the ceiling.  
  
He started to laugh, lowly but gradually gaining strength in his voice. It snapped Carrie out of her deliberation. She and Nana looked at him with wide, careful eyes.  
  
“Happy, honey –”  
  
He laughingly swatted away his mother’s voice and walked to the kitchen.  
  
The fridge was cool against his forehead, and his skin stuck a little bit as he pulled away from it.  
  
 _Slam.  
_  
 _You really are a stupid piece of shit.  
_  
“Daddy!”  
  
 _Slam.  
_  
 _Your daughter deserves better than this shit place_  
  
“Daddy, I’m _sorry!”  
_  
 _Slam. **Slam.**  
_  
 _ **SLAM.**  
_  
 _“STOP!”  
_  
His head rested against the freezer, but turned a little to look curiously at the wide-eyed, frightened little child at his hip. Tears were beginning to gloss over onto her cheeks and tint them red. Her lip trembled. His heart clenched.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she sniffled as he lowered himself to her level. “I didn’t mean to ruin the movie.”  
  
His hand lingered an inch or so above her shoulder, wondering suddenly if the contact was appropriate. Finally he rested his hand on her shoulder – clad in an old sleep shirt draping to her knees – and his thumb brushed consoling circles onto her collarbone.  
  
“Go to bed and I’ll be in there in a minute. But say goodnight to Nana first and brush your teeth.”  
  
Her shoulders shook with the force of her uncontrollable, hiccuping tears, but she nodded and marched in the direction of the couch. Miraculously, the noise above them had stopped.  
  
“Goodnight, Nana,” he heard her sniffle. “I love you.”  
  
“I love you, too, dear. Go get some rest.”  
  
Nana pecked her teary cheek and Carrie shuffled nervously past her father for the bathroom. Two sets of eyes burned into the back of her head. When the door closed, Arthur turned to his mother, incredulous and hugging his frail frame.  
  
“Was I that brash when I was her age?”  
  
“You were such a quiet boy,” Penny considered. “You were afraid of the other kids picking on you about your laugh.”  
  
“My god,” he muttered.  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _“I got you a present today,” Jocelyn said, shoving a little box into his hands. “For all the hard work you’ve done and for being such a good husband the past couple of years.”_  
  
 _An eyebrow shot up quizzically at her practically beaming, sunny composure. Last week she was as sick as a dog. They’d put it down to food poisoning from the Italian restaurant they went to for his mother’s birthday.  
_  
 _“My birthday was September, y’know,” he joked. He studied the box – the dark blue exterior, the tacky red bow she’d put on top.  
_  
 _“Just open it,” she insisted, never breaking her smile. “It’s like a present to go with the one you got on your actual birthday.”  
_  
 _He opened it, expecting a fancy watch, based on the packaging. His brows furrowed in mystification as he pulled out what looked to be little socks.  
_  
 _“What?” he muttered. There was humor in his eyes as he looked up at her. “Shrunk in the washer?”  
_  
 _“No, not the washer,” she said giddily. What?  
_  
 _Wha –  
_  
 _The socks – no, the **baby booties** – fell into his lap. All color drained from his face. His eyes blinked in rapid succession as a dawning realization came to full speed and hit his chest with the force of a freight train.  
_  
 _The weight of the word choked the air out of him. He couldn't even laugh._

_Leaping off the couch, he caught the baby shoes as they began to fall from his lap, and faced his ecstatic wife. “Are you joking?”  
_   
_“No, I’m not joking!” she laughed. “I'm really pregnant!"  
  
"Oh my ..." His hands reached up to his face, startled to find tears. The loop of one little shoe encircled his thumb. **"... god,** Joss. Oh, my **god."**  
_

_"I went to the hospital on Tuesday to confirm it and I got a letter in the mail today. I’m ten weeks.”  
_

_“Oh, my god." He grabbed his hair, feeling like a broken record inside and out. He couldn't stop staring at her smile, her tight shirt around her tiny abdomen, **I need to feed you, please sit down, I love you so much, wife.** "Joss, we’re going to have a baby?”  
_  
 _“Yes, a baby! Are you happy?”  
_  
 _“Yes!” he exclaimed, hoisting her up for a triumphant spin. A sloppy kiss was pressed onto the high of her belly. She laughed at his echoing cackle. It was starkly different from his nervous, uncontrollable giggling. It sounded whole, untethered from Arthur Fleck, the freak, the loner. “I’m so **happy.”**  
_  
“How do you know what sex is?” Carrie fiddled with the blanket, folding it in between her fingers, avoiding her father’s stare. She was sitting cross-legged in the bed, and he was sitting in front of her, turned to gauge her reaction. Next to her was the birthday gift from her mother – the Rubik’s cube she’d asked about for weeks. “Did you hear it at school, on the TV?”  
  
She shook her head, still avoiding his rare stern demeanor.  
  
“Mom and Keith told me about it,” she admitted, “because I heard them having sex.”  
  
That hit him unexpectedly. Carrie’s eyes widened, watching his face dramatically turn from stern, to surprised, to what seemed to be angry, and he knew he had to hold his tongue somewhat. He expected Jocelyn to give her the talk at some point, but Keith? They’d only been dating for three months and she was involving him in her daughter’s – no, _their_ daughter, _Arthur’s_ daughter – life that much? He had a bone to pick with Jocelyn, but saved it for her exclusively. Carrie hated their confrontations, and more often than not she was at the root of them.  
  
“What did they tell you?” he asked, leveling his breath to maintain a normal heart rate again.  
  
“Mom said it’s a grown up dance that two people do alone when they’re bored, but that’s dumb because I’ve asked her to watch movies with me all the time and she just wants to do that thing with Keith. Then Keith told me that parents don’t like talking about it so I shouldn’t ask them.”  
  
Goddammit, _goddammit_ Jocelyn. Were they deliberately fucking with her head to put him in an awkward spot? Was that how they got their kicks and grins? Goddammit, why did he always get the short end of the stick? He’d planned on having this conversation with a fifteen-year-old, not a seven-year-old. Truthfully he didn’t want to ever have to be burdened with this conversation at all. Jocelyn was the girl – this was her department.  
  
 _Item three on the to-do list tomorrow – call Jocelyn while Carrie is at school._  
  
“Neanderthals,” she heard him mutter, looking at the door. “Sex is … something adults do that lets each other express love, but in a grown up way.”  
  
“It’s about love?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“But you and Mom used to have sex.”  
  
The door was looking very nice for him to slam his head against. He tried not to balk at her genuinely innocent face. Her zest and talent for witticisms was all Jocelyn.  
  
“When am I allowed to have sex?” she asked, causing an involuntary spasm in his throat. “Do I have to ask you and Mom first? Why do –?”  
  
“Stop talking,” he insisted, putting one hand up to silence her and pressing the other hand to his chest. His heart was going to give out from stress if this continued on. Goddammit, Jocelyn, goddammit. He brushed a hand through his hair and tried to breathe comfortably. “We’re getting off track. First off, you’re not allowed to … do _that_ … until you’re at least thirty – at _least_. Maybe forty. I – _don’t_ giggle at that.”  
  
Despite his heartbeat being visible through his shirt and the itch he felt to slam his head into the bathroom mirror growing more and more, Arthur found himself suppressing a laugh along with his daughter.  
  
“Second,” he continued, trying to keep his laughter contained. “You should be allowed to ask questions about it to either me or your mother. You’re allowed to ask me – just not when other people are around.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“That’s … private grown up business.”  
  
“Am I not allowed to ask Keith?”  
  
His fist involuntarily clenched out of her sight.  
  
“I’d rather you not … can I ask _you_ a question?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Why did you think you should say they were taking naps if you knew what that word meant?”  
  
“Because I know not to talk about it around other people. And I didn’t want to make you upset in public.”  
  
What a good kid. What a great kid.  
  
He hadn’t the faintest idea where she got her kindness from.  
  
“That’s very considerate,” he said. “Do you have any questions you want to ask?”  
  
She looked down at the blanket again, continuing to fold it in the webbing of her little hands.  
  
“Can you keep Auggie out of here?” she asked timidly, looking up at his furrowed brows.  
  
“What crime did he commit to be punished so badly?”  
  
There was a hint of humor in his voice as he leaned back on his elbow. Carrie looked too serious for his liking.  
  
“His purring kept me up all night. I think that’s why I had the accident.”  
  
“Oh, really? Did it make you dream about a big, scary, purring monster?”  
  
She nodded fervently, making him laugh softly.  
  
“I got you, Peanut.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some characterization might be off since I wrote a good majority of this before the movie actually came out and only had the original script in my possession.


	3. In Need of a Father

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: suicidal ideations and possibly hinted-at child abuse near the end of the chapter

_Blue scrubs were nice to block out any noise – the incessant squeaking of rubber soles on a tile floor – but they made his feet sweat entirely too fast.  
_  
 _For a while, neither Arthur nor his wife said anything, or looked at each other. He didn’t mind, at first. It was much better than his mother, who kept alternating between wrought with concern and ready to bite his head off.  
_  
 _When he did look up at Jocelyn – her steel gaze on the window, her blonde hair laying in soft curls on her shoulders and chest, her stomach swelled with his own doing six months before – his guilt skyrocketed.  
_  
 _It was when he looked down again that Jocelyn finally broke the ice, no hint of humor or understanding in her voice. Justifiably so, he considered.  
_  
 _“A child needs a father, Arthur.”  
_  
 _A beat. He swayed slightly in his seat, eyes downcast. He realized how pathetic he must have looked to her.  
_  
 _“I know.”  
_  
 _“Do you?” she questioned, voice rising slightly. It nearly made him wince. “Then why are we here?”  
_  
 _It was a shame that inpatients labeled at risk weren’t allowed to be in the shower area alone. Arthur’s hair was oily to the touch because he wanted to get washed and get out of there as fast as possible. He hated them leering at his almost grotesquely thin frame. Jocelyn hadn’t expected it when they were married, but got used to it eventually, and even helped him gain a few extra pounds. (“Kids are heavy, Art,” she’d reasoned long ago. “Kids need a strong dad to carry them around the park. To put them in bed when they fall asleep on the couch.”)  
_  
 _He sighed.  
_  
 _“I don’t know. And I’m sorry. It was an episode. Sometimes they happen for good reason, sometimes they don’t.”  
_  
 _“Was there a reason this time?”  
_  
 _There was brittle in her voice, as though she was speaking through clenched teeth. She was spitting poison right at him. Her arms were crossed, eyes blazing and blinking back hostile tears when he looked up. He felt so insignificant, so terribly small.  
_  
 _“I can’t remember,” he admitted in a murmur, too scared to let her hear it clearly. “Maybe it was about the baby.”  
_  
 _“The baby.”  
_  
 _It was an accusatory question more than a statement. He really did wince. The baby wasn’t at fault here.  
_  
 _“I’m terrified, Joss. And I know you are, too. You and the baby need more than what I can provide.”  
_  
 _“So you couldn’t talk to me about it? I’m you wife.”  
_  
 _“I kno–”  
_  
 _“And I’m on a paid internship right now. Money is not the problem here, Arthur; it’s your brain that’s the problem.”  
_  
 _“I **know.”** He could raise his voice, too, although he eyed the guards warily in the corner, waiting to pounce on him with a tranquilizer. “You think I’m not also worried about that? Do you think I want this kid to end up as hurt as me? That’s not fair to you or to it.”  
_  
 _Another wave of silence passed between them. Cold. Disconcerting. Bitter. It was only when a formidable silence made its presence known could Arthur smell the sanitizer in the air. He hated it.  
_  
 _“I’ll be out before Valentine’s Day,” he promised.  
_  
 _“I don’t even know if I wanna do Valentine’s Day this year,” Jocelyn fired back. “My back’s been killing me so I feel sick all the time and I am so mad at my husband right now that I don’t know if he realizes how much he means to his pregnant wife.”  
_  
Arthur was in the middle of making his daughter’s lunch when he looked up to see the little tyrant sitting on the kitchen counter, elbow-deep in the medicine cabinet.  
  
“Hey!” he exclaimed, reaching out for her arm. By the time he grabbed her wrist, she was holding a clunky orange pill bottle. Blue eyes bore into green eyes. Rain blotted down on the kitchen window, casting them in an eerie dull hue of grey and white. They’d both woken in a bad mood.  
  
“You forgot to take your medicine yesterday,” she observed. He snatched it out of her hand, surprising her. Aggression was rare when Carrie was around. Usually she was the reason he remembered to take them at all – gotta be on his best behavior for his best girl.  
  
“I did not,” he shot back, returning to the sandwich. “Go brush your hair, it’s all knotted. And stop looking in the medicine cabinet, please.”  
  
Eyes radiating with pure hostility, directed at him. The insatiable urge to smash his head against the overhead cupboards until the wood was splintered into his skull. Carrie sat there still, just staring at him, as if he was an oddity. He looked up, annoyed.  
  
“Do you wanna make your lunch?” he asked, pointing at her with the jelly-dripping butter knife. One hand rested on his hip. To Carrie, he looked very much like her stern mother.  
  
“Maybe,” she fired back. “You always put on too much jelly anyway.”  
  
He set the knife on the counter, resting the dirtied half over the sink, and pointed to the hallway.  
  
“If you wanna act like your mom, go to your room til it's time for school. I’m not in a mood to deal with an attitude right now.”  
  
She hopped off the counter, the thud accentuated by her sneakers. There was no attempt to be quiet, and her little stomps reverberated in his ears. He followed after her.  
  
“Quit stomping, young lady; your grandmother is trying to sleep.”  
  
“Normal people talk about why they’re mad,” she shot back, picking up speed when she saw her father behind her. “Normal people take their medicine, so they’re not mean!”  
  
He didn’t realize the grip he had on her arm was too rough as he swung her around to face him. Not even when she squirmed to get away. At first there was defiance in her face – ha, she got my scowl – but then there was fear.  
  
“Let go,” she whispered, pleaded.  
  
“You are being a brat this morning,” he scolded, pressing his thumb further into her arm. For added emphasis, he shook her. “Should I cancel your party if you can’t behave? Stop acting like a fucking toddler!”  
  
“I don’t care, just let go!”  
  
“I’m the adult, Carrie!” He was nearly shouting in her face. She could smell the coffee on his breath. “I’m the fucking parent, you’re the kid! I –”  
  
“Daddy, you’re hurting me!”  
  
That snapped him out of his fervent state. His eyes landed on his thumb, crushing into her arm, and the red ring of skin around it. He took his hand away as if it had been burned. Carrie’s eyes were pooling with tears.  
  
Oh, _god._  
  
Quite suddenly, she was being pulled into his arms, and rested her head on his shoulder. The warm tears soaked through his shirt.  
  
“Oh god,” he muttered, picking her up. Her hand fisted the other shoulder of his jacket as he rubbed soothing circles on his back. “I’m sorry, Carrie. I’m sorry.”  
  
 ~~ _A child needs a father better than you, this is what you do, you fuck up.  
_~~  
He put her on the counter again, reluctantly prying her hand from his jacket. Gently, as she looked away with tears spilling, he lifted her left arm. He saw a faint outline of a nail having dug into her skin, but nothing severe. That would clear up before the day was done. The ring on her arm, though, was now a furious red, large circle. He was sure a bruise would form soon.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Peanut,” he whispered.  
  
He’d never gotten the side-glare before, so intensely angry and electric with hate. Jocelyn sometimes got it from Carrie when her back was turned.  
  
 ~~ _You are a fucking monster_~~  
  
“You’re right,” he said quickly. A different bottle of pills resurfaced from the medicine cabinet. “You’re right; I didn’t take my pill yesterday. I’m taking my meds right now, see? Are you thirsty? I’ll get you some water, too.”  
  
He fumbled for the cupboard. A glass rattled against the board as Arthur pulled it down with a trembling hand. Carrie was watching Auggie scratch at his ear while her father shoved a glass of water in her hands. Hurriedly, he tossed the pill in his mouth and forced it down, not realizing until then just how dry his throat was.  
  
“I still gotta make your lunch,” he commented, grabbing the knife again from the empty sink. Carrie’s eyes traveled from the half-made sandwich to her frantic father. Eventually, she climbed down off the counter again, leaving wordlessly.  
  
 _Don't slam your fucking ugly head against the cupboards and do your job  
_  
“What is that noise?”  
  
Oh, no. Not now. Not now.  
  
It was almost funny, listening to his mother slam her hand against the wall, so dainty yet so full of frustration. It also terrified him. One day she wouldn’t be here to do the other half of the raising that Arthur couldn’t do when Carrie was here. She was already slowing down in mobility.  
  
He looked up from the neatly-cut peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A hand had banged against the wall again.  
  
“Happy, keep it down! You know I need my eight hours.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Ma.”  
  
“You’re gonna give me a heart attack with all this noise!”  
  
“I know. I’m sorry”  
  
It seemed that someone else forgot to take their medication, too.  
  
\- - - -  
  
In fits of white hot rage, his laughter was uncontained. His social worker was used to it, although there was nothing to be done for how much time it ate up in appointments. Arthur sat in his usual seat, laughing to the point of breathlessness, wiping away tears.  
  
He hadn’t the faintest idea why he was laughing so hard. When it began to subside, he took in a breath.  
  
“Is it just me … or is it getting crazier out there?”  
  
Deep in the laughter, nervousness radiated from his very being. Fear. Anger. Self-loathing. It was clear that he hasn’t been sleeping.  
  
“It’s certainly tense,” Debra agreed. “People are upset, they’re struggling. Looking for work. The garbage strike seems like it’s been going on forever. These are tough times … How ‘bout you? How’s the job? Still enjoying it?”  
  
“Yeah, I mean, it’s different each day, so I really like that. I don’t think I could ever work in an office. Behind a desk. No offense.”  
  
He can’t remember the last time he saw her smile. When was the last time someone over the age of seven took some pity and laughed at his jokes?  
  
“Have you been keeping up with your journal?”  
  
“Every day.”  
  
“Great. Did you bring it with you?”  
  
There was a flash in his eyes.  
  
“I’m sorry. Did I bring what?”  
  
“Arthur, last time I asked you to bring your journal with you. For these appointments. Do you have it?”  
  
Her tone was snippy. With a grimace, he reached into his bag and pulled out the weathered book.  
  
“I’ve been using it as a journal,” he added, sliding it across to her. “But also as a joke diary. Funny thoughts or observations. Did I tell you I’m pursuing a career in stand-up comedy?”  
  
“No, you didn’t,” she said, half-listening as she flipped through. Pages and pages of angry handwriting, self-deprecation. She couldn’t tell if they were jokes or not. Cutouts from Playboy magazines.  
  
“I think I did.”  
  
One page had what she could only assume to be a drawing of Carrie Fleck. Above her, a speech bubble: ‘I hate my mom.’  
  
“Oh, yeah. Because of what your mother said,” Debra remembered. “About your purpose. ‘To bring laughter and joy to the world,’ right?”  
  
“Right.”  
  
 _ **Bad day, very bad day. Some times I feel like Carrie should live with her mom always, maybe Jocelyn doesn't know how to show love but Carrie will always be providid for and want for notheng.**_ _**I hate myself, hate myself. Grabbed Carrie’s arm too hard. Big bruise on her arm because of me, her dad! My own daughter! Because of ME!**_  
 ** _The more time I spend away from my ex-wife, the more I’m turning into her._**  
 ** _I just hope my death makes more cents than my life. I ~~think~~ KNOW Carrie’s life would be better without me in it._**  
  
“I just hope my death makes more sense than my life,” Debra repeated. For a fleeting moment, she looked at Arthur.  
  
 _That’s what she’s focused on? What about my Carrie?_  
  
He laughed, inexplicably, even though it wasn’t funny. Her priorities were screwed.  
  
“Yeah. I mean, that’s just –”  
  
“Does my reading it upset you?”  
  
He leaned in, crossing one leg over the other, trying to get more comfortable. Or as comfortable as he could. The social worker’s office was stuffy and painted in shabby grey with no real lighting. Rain still beat down on the tinted window behind her desk. Not the cheeriest place for someone in need of help.  
  
“No, I just … some of it’s personal, y’know?”  
  
“I understand. I just want to make sure you’re keeping up with it.”  
  
She slid the journal back over the desk. He nodded and held it in his lap.  
  
“Besides this morning, how’s Carrie?”  
  
“Oh, she’s great.” A rare, genuine smile. “She’s more energetic lately, runs around the apartment. Pisses my mom off to no end with it, but y’know. She’s a happy kid. I’ve tried getting her to watch Chaplin. I think she likes him.”  
  
“What happened this morning? It seems like this was just a one-off incident, if you feel this much remorse for it.”  
  
The smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared.  
  
“Oh, god. I don’t even know what I was so mad about … we both woke up in pissy moods. I missed a pill yesterday, and then Carrie was on my back about it. We woke my mom up with the stomping and the yelling and then … she looked so much like her mom, so angry. I grabbed her arm and I didn’t realize how hard I was grabbing her. God, I feel like such a fuck-up.”  
  
He ran a hand through his tousled hair.  
  
“I guess you could say that makes up for all the times you didn’t spank her as a toddler,” Debra quipped. Arthur stared, eyes flashing dangerously.  
  
“That’s not funny,” he growled. “I fucking … I made a vow to myself when she was a baby that I’d never hurt her. Y’know, she’s the only kid I’ll ever have. What kind of parent am I to be putting my hands on her like that? I’d rather fucking kill myself than cause her any harm.”  
  
Her eyes found his. The seriousness in them. He flashed a small smile of coy reassurance.  
  
“Not that I would. Her birthday’s tomorrow. I have to stick around for that.”  
  
“I’d say you let the stern parent get the best of you. It happens to even the best parents out there.”  
  
He seemed to be tuned out, wallowing again in his own frustration.  
  
“What about your mom?” Debra asked. “How’s she feeling?”  
  
“She has good days. But mostly bad. It’s been a really big help having me and Carrie around. She really needs us.”  
  
“Seems like she’s been sick a lot since you got home.”  
  
He nodded solemnly and shifted in his seat.  
  
“Yeah, it’s good she’s with us. When I was in the hospital, after my last episode – she was having trouble getting over there to visit.”  
  
Debra looked overhead to the clock. Running late again. She began to stuff papers into the ever-expanding **A. FLECK** file on her desk.  
  
“All right. So I’ll see you again, two weeks from today?”  
  
He nodded, but made no attempt to move. Debra stood up, signaling it was time for him to leave –  
  
“Is there something else I can help you with, Arthur? My next appointment is waiting.”  
  
He sat there still, letting one knee lazily swing from side to side.  
  
“Yeah. I was wondering if you could ask the doctor to increase the dosage on my medications. Nothing seems to make a difference.”  
  
“Do you know which ones you’d like increased?”  
  
He looked at her and shook his head.  
  
“Have you been sleeping?” she questioned.  
  
“Some.”  
  
That was a flat-out lie. He smiled at her anyway. She sighed and took out his file, skimming over the doctor’s receipts.  
  
“Arthur, you’re on seven different medications. Surely they must be doing something.”  
  
Finally, he stood up.  
  
“I just don’t wanna feel so bad anymore.”  
  
\- - - -  
  
“How are you feeling, Peanut?”  
  
Carrie studied his face with a small hunt of disdain emanating from the way her eyebrows were scrunched, the way her lips thinned. She looked like her grandma somewhat. Arthur nearly laughed in her face. A worrisome thought occurred of how many parents, with their own raucous, jovial children walking past them, would cast an eye of judgement on him for how angrily Carrie was looking at him. He didn’t know how many of them would be at their apartment tomorrow. At least four.  
  
“Ya know what? Since your birthday is tomorrow and we’re ordering cake and pizza, Nana and I are making your _favorite_ dinner tonight – mashed potatoes and roasted chicken.”  
  
Her little lips tried to refuse a smile, so they contorted into a cheek-sucking pout.  
  
“Do you wanna come to the store with me on the way home? I need a strong person to help me carry in some groceries.”  
  
Her scowl returned, but she nodded slowly. He could tell she would be standoffish for the rest of the night, which made him nervous for the next day. Jocelyn would be calling to wish her a happy birthday and he didn’t want her raising any suspicion by sounding melancholy.  
  
“How’s your arm?”  
  
Without breaking eye contact (just how disturbing did this child want to be? _She got her anger from you),_ Carrie jerked her sleeve up. A greenish-purple oblong bruise stuck out on her white arm like a sore thumb. A pang of guilt wrapped greedily around his chest.  
  
She didn’t begrudge him, though, when he picked her up and carried her off to the market.  
\- - - -  
Around six o’clock, she started to lighten up. She still wasn’t talking to him, but eventually he came to accept that childhood grudges were of a serious nature to younger children. His mother had brought in her old radio, and he noticed Carrie’s little foot tap, tap, tapping away against the pantry cupboard as she peeled the potatoes.  
  
 ** _Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye,_**  
 ** _Singing, ‘This’ll be the day that I die._**  
 ** _This’ll be the day that I die.'_**  
  
A soft hum caught his attention as he put the chicken on a pan, making him smile softly to himself.  
  
 _ **BZZZZZZZ--**_  
  
Sophie Dumond looked up at him, hobbling from one foot to the next as she held a large white box. A bead of sweat trickled down her soft temple.  
  
“Can I use your bathroom?”  
  
“Uh, yeah, su–”  
  
The cake box was shoved into his hands and Sophie rushed past him in hot pursuit of the hallway.  
  
“Do you wanna stay for dinner?” he called out.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Sophie did stay for dinner. It took very little convincing; Gigi was itching to have someone to play with and she was getting sick of the leftover Chinese takeout piling up in her kitchen.  
  
The chicken was fine. Arthur burnt the skin a little, but Carrie seemed to be in higher spirits. She said a quick “Thank you, Daddy” as he set her plate, and chatted amiably to the table about her party.  
  
“It’s supposed to be a surprise,” Arthur mentioned, for perhaps the hundredth time, as he handed over the bowl of mashed potatoes. “You’re not supposed to know anything about what we got planned.”  
  
“That’s not fair!” Carrie laughed. Arthur fell in love with her little smile all over again – the missing bottom teeth, the crinkle of her dimples. “It’s my party! I should get to know if I’ll like it or not.”  
  
“Don’t worry, Arthur, I got all the necessary decorations,” Sophie said. “We got a bunch of party favors for your friends that are age appropriate, since you’re a big kid now. Tax documents, bills, paperclips …”  
  
Another thing that Arthur loved about his daughter was her inability to keep a stern face for too long. She shot Sophie a menacing look from across the table, and held her fork in a tightly wound fist, but her face cracked almost as soon as Sophie and Gigi laughed at her. A puff of exasperated breath escaped through Carrie’s nose and she burst into an unwilling fit of giggles.  
  
There were a precious few moments where Arthur could allow himself to relax.  
  
“You’re so _cute,”_ Sophie said, putting a polite hand in front of her mouth to contain her laughter.  
  
 _“She’s perfect, Happy,” his mother – no, Nana – said, running a finger adoringly over the baby’s rosy chin. “She looks just like her mom, doesn’t she?”  
_  
 _“Thank god, right?”  
_  
 _He allowed himself to laugh. In seventeen hours he’d barely taken a moment to breathe. It had been seventeen hours of fearing and running around, sweating and hand crushing, crying from exhaustion and then crying from joy.  
_  
 _Carrie Frances Fleck, born May 13th at Gotham General Hospital at 8:05 PM.  
_  
 ** _Carrie Frances Fleck, born May 13th at Gotham General Hospital at 8:05 PM.  
_**  
 _ ~~Good job~~  
_  
 _The phrase ran circles in his brain, making less and less sense every time. A new face in the world, a new little person, with his name and his blood.  
_  
 _He barely noticed that Joss was laughing, too. Her hair was still sticking to her neck from all the sweat and she could barely keep her eyes open, but her shoulders were shaking in laughter and she was smiling. The emotional and physical wringer from eighteen hours earlier did not deter her interest in the little baby, nor the smile that suggested something righteously smug, as though saying, **'That whole body was created inside of me.'**  
_  
 _How could she smile after something so traumatic?  
_  
 _His spirit really had rubbed off on her.  
_  
 _“You are just marvelous,” he heard his mother coo. The baby, abruptly and hastily named Carrie as deviated from their plan for her, had one eye open, peering at the new person and the harsh lights with true Fleck intensity.  
_  
 _“Oh, come on, Carrie,” Arthur said softly, daring a reach a trembling hand out and stroke her cone-shaped head. Carrie. Carrie. It felt good and proper for her. “Don’t look so grouchy.”  
_  
 _Just smile a little.  
_  
\- - - -  
  
Carrie nights were peaceful, and Arthur often found himself relaxing with an unwitting smile on his face when she was in the apartment. While he would settle into a late night program and sink into the couch, he would faintly hear her voice from the bathroom.  
  
 ** _I’m singin’ in the rain – just singin’ in the rain._**  
 ** _What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again._**  
  
For a moment, a smile crept up on Arthur’s face, and he dared to look over at Sophie on the other side of the couch. Curled into her lap was Gigi, asleep. Sophie was resting her head on her knuckle, looking at the television in dismay.  
  
“Sometimes I wish Murray Franklin would just shut up,” she sighed. “Can we watch something else, Art? I’m tired of his pro-capitalist shit, y’know?”  
  
He’d zoned out, and came back startled by her rare use of profanity. Tuning in, Murray Franklin was indeed preaching about the garbage strike stinking up Gotham, and how the working class was becoming petulant, dissatisfied with all the hard work the upper class was doing for them.  
  
“They want a higher minimum wage,” he conceded, to the groans and hollers of some audience members. “They’re just like children – they’ll stink you up until you give them more cookies –”  
  
 ** _“I walk down the lane, with a happy refrain.”_**  
  
There was a halt. Sophie had changed the station to whatever mindless soap opera drabble. Water sloshed around in the bathroom.  
  
 _“Daddy!”_ she called with a certain hum in her voice. He was on his feet and to the bathroom at a relaxed pace, one he was unused to but was definitely not complaining about.  
  
She was sitting in the tub, her knees hiked up to her chest. With her hair flattened down and clinging to her face, her eyes looked exceptionally larger, more childlike.  
  
“I accidentally packed my shampoo and my bubbles back in my bag and forgot to get them out. Could you go get them, please?”  
  
 _Polite girl. Always so polite._  
  
 _Most definitely, she’s not your kid, she’s not Jocelyn’s either_  
  
“You could just leave it on the edge of the tub, Peanut,” he recommended and handed the bottles to her.  
  
“Nana likes to steal my shampoo,” she laughed. “It smells like apples.”  
  
“Well who wouldn’t want that? You’re gonna smell just wonderful for your party tomorrow. Are you excited, Miss Eight?”  
  
She nodded fervently, scrubbing the soap into her hair and smiling up at him. There were times where she looked exactly as he remembered when their family was three and still whole. It made him –  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
Carrie’s eyes traveled to where his finger was pointing, at the garish green mark on her upper right ribcage, just below –  
  
“Mom and Keith and Mrs. Eastman took me and Todd to the park the other day,” she said quickly, softening her eyes to calm his worried gaze. “Todd and I were on the see-saw and I went up too fast. I hit the handle and almost fell off.”  
  
“Are you sure that’s what it’s from?” he asked, putting a hand on his hip. Carrie was an expert little liar, but not with her father. He could sense it from a mile away.  
  
Still, she nodded, giving a soft smile of reassurance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene in the social worker's office was lifted from the script itself. I was just too lazy to go back and have to rewrite the whole thing for the sake of a few off-lines hsgsdj


	4. Happiest of Birthdays

_“Jocelyn, when I say push, I need you to push for **ten seconds.”**_

_"Jesus **Christ,** I can't," she was wailing. "I can't!" **  
  
**"Yes you can, Jocelyn, the head is almost out. It's gonna be horrible but you got this." **  
**_  
_However encouraging the words seemed, Arthur knew that his wife was ready to bite the nurse’s head off. What was she in this, besides a pair of eyes and hands?  
_   
_He couldn’t say that he blamed Joss -- not even as she growled an uncountable amount of filthy words and tore holes in the hospital bed sheets. They were both exhausted, one more than the other. The adrenaline of getting to the hospital and ready for the birth had worn off long ago. Anxious smiles – “We’re going to have a baby” – were cast aside with fitful napping and primal groans building to crescendo screams. The midwives had tested more humiliating laboring positions than Arthur had believed existed, before finally setting her on her back as she originally had been, her husband dutifully holding one leg in a clammy hand, her other leg in an elder midwife's care. The remnants of the botched nitrous oxide -- besides the mentally scarring image of his weary wife in an oxygen mask -- was the spit-up drying on the upper thigh of his slacks.  
  
Arthur never remembered his mother describing his birth being so tedious, so unsettling.  
_   
_As he thought about it, in all the time, his mother never discussed his birth at all. Perhaps they should have asked her beforehand.  
_   
_He couldn’t think about his mother now. His wife was beginning to push again. The fifteenth time in as many horror-struck minutes.  
_   
_Push. Push.  
_   
_She was pushing their child into the world.  
_   
_Jocelyn, **push. Please push.  
**_   
**_PUSH.  
_ **   
**_“I AM PUSHING -- SHUT UP!”  
_ **   
_Had he really said it out loud?  
_   
_The vice grip she kept on his hand for hours slacked every so often as her breathing turned into feeble cries. She was in so much pain. He couldn't stand even experiencing it as an outsider. He couldn't find any words of comfort or encouragement when her eyes fogged over with tears and turned to him, helpless as though they were separated by a glass wall.  
_   
_Arthur had never felt so useless in his life.  
  
"Another contraction. Big breath and right back on it."_

_"You're doing great -- I see some pretty blonde hair!"  
_   
_“Dad, would you like to see?”  
_   
_Were they talking to him? Who was Dad? His own father wasn’t there – never had any reason to be.  
_   
_He was hovering over the collection of short nurses before he processed that he was moving at all. One second he was pressing a kiss to a bone-white finger knuckle and then he was standing two feet away. Seventeen hours by his wife’s side, holding her hand and her leg for the good part of forty minutes, his body was getting sore. It felt tone deaf in his own head, and he refrained from telling her about the inconvenience. His arms wrapped around each other, tight and terrified, wishing he could disappear until the worst was over. The mantra **"your fault"** had looped around his brain and tightened it to near-breakdown mode for an uncountable amount of hours, watching his woman writhe and scream and contort in nauseating distress.  
_   
_“Okay Jocelyn, another big push, girl. You got this, right?”  
_   
_“Arthur, can you see the baby?” she whined, high and tight with pain.  
_   
_“I … I, um –”  
_   
_His arms dropped, feeling dead and useless. All the blood tinting his cheeks dropped to his feet as his brows rose.  
  
He was seeing something. Blood and **something.** A cone-shaped Something covered in white material and a fine head of hair sticking out of his wife, pushed well past her capacity. The Something that had been close to killing his wife since three in the morning, leaving her trembling at the thighs and snot-nosed crying. The Something didn’t have a face. Oh, **no.**  
_   
_The nurse’s hands grabbed hold of flesh – it took Arthur several seconds to realize it was the neck. Slowly, ever so slowly (god, everything was too slow but too fast, TOO FAST, **SLOW DOWN),** the same hands started to turn the Something so that Arthur – Dad (Dad?) – could see better._

_"Jocelyn, do you wanna reach out and touch the baby? The head is out, you're doing very well."  
  
"No," she said feebly.  
  
"Can Arthur touch the baby?"  
  
 **"No."**_

_Her voice gained strength in the resolve. A laugh escaped Arthur before he could register it. Maybe it was the other nurses laughing that did it. He was scared and useless and unsure of where to look.  
_  
 _The Something **had** a face – squashed and open-mouthed, as though pressed against a glass window. Taking in great gasps of air, the Something made repeated squalling noises, what Arthur would liken to a monkey. He stood, watching, unable to do anything else but watch. An itch in the back of his brain advised him that he was watching more than a Something, that he was watching his child **(her** child, **our child, OUR CHILD)** take its first breaths of life.  
  
The thought of such an intimacy, its implications rather than the act itself of watching it (hell, why was everything so bloody?), forced a breath inside his crushed lungs, deep and cold and sterile. **Breathe with it, breathe for her.**  
_  
 _One shoulder was out. Both shoulders. There was hitched screaming he saw out of his peripheral. Two screams drowned and midwives crying "It's almost here, almost here!" suffocated by the sound of his heart pulsing in his ears. His hands shook in renewed life the longer he stared at the anomaly.  
  
"Here it is, you did great!" one of them exclaimed, sing-song and so grossly out of place in the sordid, screeching mess. If his tongue wasn't dry as sandpaper, forcing him to just stare, Arthur might have screamed with them.  
_  
 _The entire body, veined with blood along every inch of discolored grey skin as his wife unleashed a weakened howl of relief._ _It was held up to Joss' line of sight in between the wide gap of her legs. More or less coherent, Arthur watched her head fall back in relief as she wailed with the stranger still tethered to her being, sheened in blood and sweat and nothing he ever remembered seeing on the picturesque TV families.  
_  
 _“Happy Mother's Day, Mama!” the beaming nurse said over the screeching cries. “It’s a girl!"  
_  
 _It took Arthur a second. He fell into his chair.  
_  
 _The Something was on Jocelyn’s chest, calming down the incessant shrieking as messy hands pawed at her collarbone. Jocelyn was crying still, and breathing in sharply, but he saw the faintest smile beginning to form. On the other side of Joss was a dark-skinned male nurse, using a rag to wipe off the muck from the Something’s head and the crevices of its fat arms. The Something was looking straight at Arthur with a narrowed, bleary eye.  
_  
 _ **“Oh, my god!”** Joss was howling. “She’s beautiful, Art – **you’re beautiful!”**  
_  
 _Joss’ head fell back again on the flimsy, sweat-stained pillow. He took a moment to realize she was laughing.  
  
He was unsure how long he was watching them, or why his chest felt ice cold, or if he should do something besides stare. His brain was short-circuiting.  
_  
 _“Do you wanna hold her, Dad?”  
_  
 _That was another nurse, female and tanned. She was young and smiling at him, and had a darker blue uniform than the rest of them. An aide?  
_  
 _Oh god, ~~oh god,~~ her hands were gripping the Something, pulling it upright and closer to him with the added support of a pink newborn blanket. He was coherent to everyone else only long enough to question if they'd whipped it out of thin air as soon as the word "girl" was pronounced. Before he could say anything, any objections, the Something was in his left arm, awkward and unsure. His hand was supporting its neck. He'd retained that knowledge since the beginning of reading those dumb parenting books. It gnawed its way into his brain and never stopped.  
  
Another cloth was draped over the Something to give it some shred of decency, although Arthur's eyes skimming in wonderment all across its pink body did confirm that underneath a clipped umbilical cord, it was indeed a **girl.  
  
Breathe breathe breathe, one two three, in, one two three, out, ~~IT'S A GIRL~~  
  
** The nurse was gently positioning his arm like he was some sort of wired doll. A hand under the head there, the arm cradling her body there. The hands of extra support withdrew, leaving him defenseless with the Something, bare and screechy as she was. Blue, puffy and reassured, rested on green, **terrified.**  
_

 _The face of the Something was getting more and more bleary as he realized his eyes were filling with tears. A cracked sob accompanied a breath he didn't realize he needed to take in.  
_  
 _He’d never been speechless before.  
_  
 _“She doesn’t look like a Judy,” Joss said, watching them with rapt attention. Two nurses were helping position her to lay lower into the bed to sleep. Arthur blinked. Tears coursed down his face, one after another. Joss’ laugh was silk and honey and **iron strength. I love you and it pains me and I love my pain for you.** “I don’t know what she looks like, but not Judy Fleck. Oh god, Art ... look at her."  
_  
 _“Carry her just like that,” the young aide said, fixing Arthur’s other hand to support the Something’s neck with his palm. His fingers skimmed soft, slick hair -- **blonde,** praise god, less copper where they wiped away droplets of blood. Nose not as squashed, but button-like, red and upturned like her mama's and so painfully cute. Her entire body fit into his arm. She did not take her eyes off of him, the nervous wreck that he was. “That’s perfect.”  
_  
 _If only the schoolyard punks could see Happy now.  
_  
 _ ~~Don’t think about them right now, focus on her~~  
_  
 _To have a daughter. To be the father of a daughter. Daughter. Daughter. Daughter.  
_  
 _He was holding his daughter – carrying his daughter in his arms.  
_  
 _Carry her. Protect her.  
_  
 _“Do you have any other names picked out?” one of the nurses asked. Arthur looked up quickly. There was a piece of paper. If not a Judy, then what?  
_  
 _He looked down again. Keep carrying her. Keep protecting her. Always always always protect.  
_  
 _Carry her.  
_  
 _“Uh, Carrie,” he answered.  
_  
\- - - -  
  
 _“Carrie Frances Fleck!”  
_  
A shriek of surprise resonated around the small bedroom as a pair of hands grabbed the little girl from the bed and hoisted her up in the air.  
  
“Daddy!”  
  
“Isn’t it someone’s birthday today?” he asked, risking knocking over the lamp as he started to toss her up in the air. "What are you doing? Who gave you permission to get so old?"  
  
“Yes, now put me down!” Her voice betrayed a heap of giggles, and whenever he would catch her, she would smile wider. “I’m getting dizzy!”  
  
When he stopped tossing her, both of them laughing breathlessly, she rested her hands on his shoulders and looked down at him.  
  
“You’re getting too big for me to do this every year,” he said. “Can you stop growing if I ask nicely?”  
  
“I don’t wanna grow up. Or you could just get bigger and stronger so you don’t have to stop tossing me up every year.”  
  
A strand of hair fell in front of her eye. She brushed it out of her face before pushing her father’s hair behind his ear.  
  
“You know what? I went out early and got your favorite breakfast this morning.”  
  
“Waffle House?” she asked, eyes widening. He smiled. “I love you, Daddy.”  
  
That was all he needed to hear, then and for as long as he had her.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Birthdays often brought out the best air in the Fleck household, especially concerning its youngest member. Every birthday with Carrie in the house began with her running up to hug whoever was in their apartment. Auggie did not appreciate being so unceremoniously taken from his food bowl and then dropped on the ground, but Nana reached her arm out, all but beaming and waiting for the embrace.  
  
“Good morning, Nana.”  
  
“Good morning, darling, and happy birthday.”  
  
Carrie was still small enough that she had to be hoisted in the kitchen chairs. It sent her into a fit of giggles that made Arthur swoon inside. She was still a baby to him.  
  
As grandmother and granddaughter chatted along happily, Arthur stood on the other side of the kitchen, pulling out an assortment of pill bottles. For just a moment, he walked over and grabbed the canister of powdered sugar, neither girl seeming to notice his presence.  
  
 _Sometimes it’s good to be invisible_  
  
The Meprobamate and Temazepam blended in easily with the powdered sugar on his mother’s breakfast. She was enthralling Carrie with a story about when Carrie was a toddler and knocked over a box of Christmas decorations.  
  
“Eat, Mom,” he recommended, pushing the plate in front of her.  
  
“You need to eat, Happy,” she countered. “You’re as thin as a rake.”  
  
\- - - -  
  
“I thought we were going to the ice cream parlor,” Carrie said. Arthur sighed.  
  
“We are. And then the park tomorrow. I just think your mom might not be so happy about you skipping school.”  
  
They came to a familiar crosswalk, holding hands per usual. There was a mother beside them, pushing around a broken stroller, inside which an infant was screaming. It could bring down entire buildings, the shrieking. Arthur closed his eyes, trying not to react.  
  
Sometimes, he really hated Gotham.  
  
“Did you like the card your mom got you?” he asked. They started to walk again, a little slower than the hurried mother who pushed past them.  
  
“She gave me twenty dollars and said she loved me,” Carrie said. “But the card had a bird on the front. I think she’s making fun of me.”  
  
“Why do you think that?”  
  
“She knows I hate birds. I’m terrified of birds.”  
  
“I don’t think she did it to make fun of you, Peanut.” For the sake of staying in Jocelyn’s good graces as much as he could, staying on her side was a necessary evil. “I think it was just a lapse of judgement. Every mom and dad has them.”  
  
It was a serious lapse of judgement. Carrie’s fears were not something to be trifled with. He remembered clear as day one of their last family trips to the Gotham Zoo, two-year-old Carrie came a little too close to a nearby pond and stuck her arm through the bars to feed a goose. There was blood and screaming. What followed was a traumatic hospital visit where the poor toddler needed eleven stitches and the doctors feared a lifelong scar. Jocelyn was laughing, even after seeing the damage done to her distraught daughter.  
  
 ~~ _“Why the fuck are you laughing?!”  
_~~  
“Mom never has good judgement, though.”  
  
He was forced to agree, although he bit his tongue.  
  
“We’ll get some ice cream after school,” he assured. “I just have some errands to run.”  
  
“Can we go to the park with the ice cream?” she asked. He felt the lightest squeeze from her hand. His heart clenched.  
  
“It might be a little too muddy for the park today. We’ll see.”  
  
\- - - -  
  
Gotham’s air was thick with pungent smog, hazing the entire Lower East Side. Arthur lost count of how many weeks the garbage strike had been going on. Jocelyn had just about had a fit over him returning Carrie for the week, only for Carrie to smell like she hadn’t bathed the entire time she was with him.  
  
He couldn’t really remember the last time Gotham was a happy place to be. Not even when he was a child. Not even when Carrie was born. His fears had been amplified and he’d wanted nothing more than to grab her and run for it.  
  
Arthur turned the corner and made a beeline for the drug store, not paying mind to the two homeless drunks he passed by. One swung a punch at the other, and someone threw an arm out, causing a cry of pain. Just a block down he could hear a pack of dogs barking ominously. The tinkering bell at the top of the drug store door was so pleasantly out of place that he nearly laughed.  
  
Five, six, _seven_ prescription bottles stuffed in a bag. He remembered when it was just one. Then as his episodes got worse with the divorce, one became two, _then two became four, then –_  
  
His apartment complex was nice once, when Carrie was younger. No nosy or noisy tenants. No extra guests in their two-bedroom apartment. There wasn’t much furniture, but for a good year or so, it didn’t really matter to either of them. Back when she was four, Carrie weeks made all his predicaments bearable.  
  
And then the complex got more crowded. Neighbors stopped being as nice when Carrie started growing. The landlord couldn’t keep up with upkeep, and now there were dirty handrails and walls too thin and mold growing in the lobby corners. And his mother only got sicker and –  
  
“Wait!”  
  
He put his foot in the door of the wheezing elevator with a little panache. It was almost like a reflex. Ma always said he was a romantic at heart.  
  
Sophie hustled to the elevator, grocery bags in both arms and Gigi trailing behind her. They both looked quite tired.  
  
“Thank you,” she said. “Of course it’d be you. Everyone else in this building is so rude.”  
  
There were mornings where Arthur just didn’t trust himself to speak. There was a laugh rising in his throat, and after a laugh it would just be bile and disdain. He hated the accursed nervous laugh. And Sophie Dumond was just too beautiful to talk to a dud like him.  
  
“Had to get a little early-morning shopping done before work,” Sophie commented. “Gigi’s sick so I thought maybe the market would do her some good.”  
  
Arthur scarcely heard it. He was watching Gigi standing behind her mother, licking the smudge off of the elevator handrail. Sometimes he couldn’t help but stare at people.  
  
“How’s your mom doing?”  
  
He took a deep breath, swallowing down the laugh, and held up the prescription bag.  
  
“It’s day to day. I’m doing everything I can to get her back on her feet. Picked up her medicine. Gonna make her an early lunch before I head to work.”  
  
The smile that Sophie gave him (“She and Carrie are lucky to have you.”) went unnoticed. His attention was once again on Gigi, licking the dirty handrail.  
  
Sophie turned and finally took notice. Gently she kicked the child away, at a loss of free hands.  
  
“Jesus, don’t do that, Gigi! How many times have I told you? Do you want to get even sicker?” She turned. “This building is so awful, isn’t it?”  
  
He nodded softly, unsure of what to say.  
  
They door opened. They all stepped out.  
  
“Okay. Well, tell your mom I said hello. I’ll be sure to stop by after work to help with the party.”  
  
They turned, and started going, going –  
  
He stood.  
  
“Sophie?” She turned. He was startled by the resonance in his speech. “I’ll tell my mom you said hello.”  
  
She smiled at him. Whether out of pity or humor, he didn’t want to decipher. He tried to remember every part of her.  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _If Arthur could stop the world right where it was, and focus on this single moment, he supposed he would never get on with the rest of his life.  
_  
 _The cake frosting was disgusting – pink and sickly sweet, the sugar sticking to his tongue like glue. Carrie’s face was smeared with cake and yellow glitter, which he knew was going to be a nightmare to wash off. The piano tinkling for the Mr. Rogers theme on the television signaled that he was going to be bored to tears.  
_  
 _But she looked so happy. She’d stared up at him with her peaceful ocean eyes and said “Thank you, Daddy.” Her hair was sticking out every which way and she had gotten frosting on the dress Nana had sewn for her – the true sign of a good birthday. Her attention diverted from her mouthful of cake and sticky, drool-coated hand to the TV.  
_  
 _“Daddy!” she exclaimed, rushing to tug on his pant leg. “TV time, TV time! Snuggle time!”  
_  
 _His favorite part of Carrie days. Snuggle time, where she sat next to him, enraptured by the television and stayed quiet, aside from the occasional, harmonious giggle. He so loved the sound of it._

 _It was funny to think back on the day. Arthur had dreaded her fourth birthday, not only due to the lack of support from the Other. He loathed the thought of his little girl growing up so fast. There was an underlying itch in the back of his mind for most of the day that told him he was going to screw something up. Yet, there he was, probably the most peaceful he’d ever been.  
_  
 _He wasn’t necessarily happy. He’d never been truly happy, and it amused him to think he could be as artificially happy as coffee could be artificially sweetened. No sad clown with a failed marriage and a kid to worry about could really, truly be happy.  
_  
 _But Carrie calmed his nerves. When she would inevitably fall asleep against him – her sticky fist curled into his shirt, her glitter-and-pink-frosting face against his chest, her halo of blonde hair tangled into knots from all the childish birthday rubbish (he would pay dearly for it when he gave her a bath) – and the TV crooned out the occasional “I like you as you are,” Arthur couldn’t say he would ever want the moment to stop.  
_  
 _That was until Carrie would wake up a few minutes later, stretch her little arms up, toss them around his neck, and say, “I love you, Daddy.”  
_  
 _One good day.  
_  
\- - - -  
  
“Did you have a good talk with your mother?”  
  
Carrie nodded softly, invested in her slice of pepperoni pizza. It was overloaded with Parmesan cheese and flaking onto her clothes. Arthur could tell she was only half-listening and chuckled.  
  
“Did she have anything nice to say?”  
  
“She said she loved me and asked if I had a good party.”  
  
“Did you?”  
  
He hoped she did. The kids were loud and difficult to keep under control for his mother’s sake, and the cake was so sickly sweet that Arthur couldn’t believe he had paid thirteen dollars for it. But something about Carrie’s many thank yous – her face was still caked in white and orange and black, when she asked for the fiercest tiger during face painting – and the laughter from all the other children who had long since left, made the experience worthwhile. Sophie and Gigi were suffering a sugar crash on his couch, daughter piled on top of mother.  
  
“Definitely,” Carrie decided. “Mom said Keith has more presents for me at home, but I bet it’s just boring clothes.”  
  
“You’ll learn to like clothes for presents when you get older,” he commented, grabbing a slice of pizza for himself. “Not everyone has the luxury of name-brand clothes, Peanut.”  
  
“But clothes are so boring,” she spat, munching again on her slice. Arthur laughed softly. “All I can do is play dress-up, which isn’t fun when I have nobody to play with. I never have friends at Mom’s house. The only person who plays dress-up with me is Keith, and he’s no good. He forces me to so it's not fun.”  
  
Arthur’s gaze locked on his daughter, and he froze.  
  
“What?”  
  
Carrie looked up at him, slowing her chewing. For a split second, he swore he saw a twinge of panic shoot through her. When she set the pizza down, she rested her hands in her lap.  
  
“What do you mean he forces you to play?”  
  
His voice was low, indecipherable to anybody else in the house, and he leaned in close.  
  
“I mean he lets me put him in tiaras and feather boas,” she said quickly. “He helps me dress up my stuffed animals, and put on fashion shows with them.”  
  
“Carrie …”  
  
No, not here. Not at the kitchen table, surrounded by a behemoth of party decorations and presents and food. Quickly he stood up, grabbing her hand and coaxing her down the hall. After gently pushing her into the bathroom, he shut the door and brought himself down to her level.  
  
“Carrie, do you feel safe at your mother’s house?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
 _Liar._  
  
“You can tell me the truth, Carrie. I’m your father – it’s my job to protect you. You know that, right?”  
  
“Yes, Daddy.”  
  
“Has Keith ever …” The words got lost in his throat, too horrendous to get them out without a hint of a laugh. He would rather die than laugh thinking such a terrible thing. Taking a moment, he swallowed the laugh down. “Has Keith ever made you feel uncomfortable, or hurt you?”  
  
There was an agonizing wait for what could have only been two seconds, but felt like an eternity, before Carrie shook her head, no.  
  
And he swore he could see right through her.  
  
“If he did, you can tell me or your mother. You know that right? No matter how distant she might be, your mom only wants to protect you.”  
  
 _Liar, liar.  
_  
“I know,” she whispered, bringing her dainty hand to her father’s. Lazily she swung the connected arms and tried to flash a soft grin at him. The indecisiveness eating away at his bones was reassured for that brief moment.  
  
“If you know, do you wanna tell me the truth?”  
  
“Daddy –”  
  
“Carrie Frances,” he stressed, gently clenching her hand. “I would do anything to protect you. And if you’re unhappy at your mother’s house, that’s something I need to know, so I can talk to your mother about it. Help me help you, Peanut – please.”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
She wrenched her hand away.  
  
Arthur sighed, having played this game before. He would run circles around an inane comment and make a big deal out of what was potentially nothing.  
  
“I’m sorry, Peanut. Let’s get your face cleaned, alright?”  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur would be a liar to say he wasn’t at least a little intimidated by Jocelyn’s side of Gotham. The higher-ups, the healthier, happier class.  
  
He’d never been over to her new house. Only once before did he go to her work, under the pretense of signing divorce papers. The office was shrouded in grey colors and stiff air, casting a cloud of judgement on his rugged, downtrodden look – disheveled hair, beige jacket, jeans. Even Joss herself, the woman whom had spent ten years dutifully by his side, looked at him like some sort of blemish in her pristine setting.  
  
A blemish. A streak? A fleck.  
  
She spent ten years of her life parading Jocelyn Fleck to anyone who would listen.  
  
There was only so much time Arthur could stomach a conversation with his ex-wife as far as Carrie was concerned. Jocelyn’s blasé attitude regarding their daughter rattled Arthur’s nerves like nothing else.  
  
“Arthur, don’t you have work?”  
  
“I told them Carrie was sick. We need to talk.”  
  
There was an awkward stretch of silence where Jocelyn watched him pace about the office, as if it was his space.  
  
“Well I have a meeting to go.”  
  
“It can wait.”  
  
They both straightened up, her eyebrows rising in surprise. For a moment, she craned her body to try to look past him to the door.  
  
“Where’s Carrie?” she asked.  
  
“At school.”  
  
“So she’s sick and you sent her to –”  
  
“God,” Arthur muttered, combing a hand through his hair. “Keith needs boundaries with Carrie.”  
  
Jocelyn stopped for just a moment and straightened up, raising her eyebrows to challenge the claim. Her mouth moved from gaping mid-sentence to a thin line, looking very much like she swallowed a lemon slice.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“The way she’s describing her time over at your house with him is unhealthy. Did you guys really give her the _sex talk?_ That’s my daughter and he’s a grown man she doesn’t know.”  
  
“Oh god, Arthur,” Jocelyn groaned, falling back into her office chair. “Is that what’s got you so worked up? That we had the talk with her?”  
  
“And that he’s playing dress-up with her. They barely _know_ each other,” he spat, feeling the irritation swell as he took in more breath. “Doesn’t he have two boys? Why doesn’t he focus on them? Can you imagine how confused and scared Carrie is, having this new man in her house all of a sudden, talking to her about sex?”  
  
“Arthur, calm down,” she snapped. “You’ll work yourself into another one of your fits.”  
  
His eyes closed slowly; face scrunching in an attempt to stop any irrational thoughts from making it past his lips. Eventually his eyes settled on the floor.  
  
 ~~ _(“Arthur, stop your bitch fit and sign the papers, and then we’ll be done with each other.”)  
_~~  
“Keith does have two sons. One is away at a boarding school and the other lives with Keith’s ex-wife. Keith told me he always wanted a daughter – that’s why he’s invested in Carrie. Is that a satisfactory answer for you?”  
  
He could tell she was becoming cross. The way her head bounced with her words. The snippy way she cut her phrases off. He saw it numerous times when she was deliriously angry with pregnancy hormones.  
  
“Are you done?” she asked. “Because I really do have a meeting to –”  
  
“I saw a bruise on her chest,” Arthur cut in, finally bringing his face up to meet hers. Her eyebrow rose in question. “When she was taking a bath. You have any idea how she got it?”  
  
Her eyes traveled up to the ceiling. Arthur wondered whether she was truly about to kick him out or if she was praying for a swift answer to present itself.  
  
“Kids get bruises all the time. Remember when she was first learning to walk? She was bumping into everything table corner she could find. She probably was roughhousing too hard when she and Keith were wrestling around on the floor. I’ll tell them to be more careful next time, alright?”  
  
 _Todd and I were on the see-saw and I went up too fast. I hit the handle and almost fell off.  
_  
“Okay.”  
  
Jocelyn twirled a pen in between her fingers. Two emotions stirred in the low of Arthur’s chest, the first being a warm, almost fuzzy feeling. He remembered Jocelyn at twenty-three years old, a baton twirler for their college’s marching band. He remembered how enthralled and utterly exhausted she was after each performance.  
  
The other feeling was more akin to disdain. Any matter concerning their child was brushed aside with very little regard. Considering he had to fight tooth and nail for joint custody, her ‘whatever happens happens’ attitude pissed him off.  
  
“Was there anything else?” she asked, beginning to stand. He shook his head.  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Well thanks,” she muttered, striding past him. He followed, the cut in her voice hitting him like he was some sort of naughty schoolboy. “Now I can’t grab something to eat from the lounge before the meeting.”  
  
 _How tragic, Jocelyn – what a burden I’ve put on your life._


	5. Girl to Girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's notes:
> 
> TW: blood. Menstrual blood. Divorced parents acting like children. A crude mention of split personality.

Arthur would think he was one step ahead of most men in terms of rearing a little girl, for the most part by himself. The two year transition period between the separation and his mother moving in gave him ample opportunity to learn all there was to know about hair braiding, stuffed animal parties, and the varying shades of pink dresses Carrie just needed to have. Truth be told, he was quite relieved when her seventh birthday rolled around, and she asked for “a blue dress – any shade of blue is good.”  
  
When his mother came to stay, it wasn’t wholly without merit. Mom droned incessantly that she never saw enough of her only grandchild, and the new arrangement gave Carrie a woman to confide in. Before her condition worsened, Mom would sometimes allow Carrie to pass out in her bed, giving Arthur his own room back, if only for the night. Arthur didn’t always heed or understand the advice his mother would dream up, as Carrie would run to her room in a tearful huff – “She’s a girl, Happy. A little girl’s temper can be more volatile than a boy’s” – but he took any advice he could get. Certainly Jocelyn wasn’t very keen on picking up the phone to answer his beck and call.  
  
But he did pretty alright on his own. She was healthy. She was alive.  
  
That wasn’t to say he was ever prepared to be shaken awake, blearily staring into the face of his tearful, trembling daughter.  
  
“Daddy, wake up,” she blubbered. A sniffle here, a sucked-back sob there. Slowly he became more alert.  
  
“Wazzamatter?” he managed. Rubbing one eye with his palm, he saw stars.  
  
“I need to go to a doctor!” Carrie cried. More alert now, Arthur’s eyes opened wider.  
  
“Why?” He started to sit up, scanning over her body – trembling with sobs, but otherwise unscathed. Her legs were fidgeting, crossing and uncrossing constantly. “Carrie, what’s wrong?”  
  
“I think I got hurt,” she cried. “I’m bleeding.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
Grabbing Carrie by the arms, he spun her around, looking her over. Her pajamas seemed fine. Feet as pink as they usually were, dirtied only from the apartment floor.  
  
“Um … in my panties.”  
  
He was just pulling her hair up, looking over her head for scratches. It took a few seconds for the words to really settle in.  
  
On his week of all times.  
  
Arthur let his back slump against the couch, sucking in a breath as he felt the oncoming blister of a laugh in his throat. Not now, not now. Not ever.  
  
Carrie stood dumbly, crossing her legs as her father had his newest laughing fit. It was incredibly uncomfortable and sticky, like she had to go to the bathroom. She could see in his eyes, he was desperately trying to stop, in spite of the pain it caused to resist it. It sounded like when she would cough whenever she got a cold, and the way her lungs felt ticklish and made her sick.  
  
The laughter was mercifully short. He shook his head, avoiding her worried eye.  
  
“You’re not hurt, Carrie,” he said quietly. “You’re fine.”  
  
“But I’m bleeding, Daddy.”  
  
“Carrie, I promise.” He leaned forward and stroked a tear away with his thumb. His calmed gaze settled her nerves somewhat. “It happens to every girl. I expected it to happen a few years down the road, but … I guess every girl is different. Um … if you wanna go take a shower, I’ll go run to the convenience store on Cicero, alright?”  
  
“But what if I bleed too much and pass out?”  
  
“That won’t happen, Peanut. Just go get in the shower, alright? I’ll be right back.”  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur wished there was a law that mandated mothers to be the ones to have to buy sanitary products for daughters. Even with his back turned, he could feel the young female cashier’s eyes drilling into the back of his head as he stood in the aisle of tampons and sanitary napkins.  
  
Didn’t he hear something on the news recently about women having toxic shock syndrome from using tampons? Absolutely not. Pads it was then. But what the hell were wings? Heavy flow? Why did they have a tax?  
  
A woman came through the aisle as Arthur was holding a package in his hands, inspecting the price. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw the eye of judgement – _god, what a creep._  
  
Fortunately, the young woman working the register didn’t say anything more than she had to - $2.50 for a pack, they’d better live up to the price. He all but ran from the store.  
  
For good measure, he made a quick stop to the McDonald’s in between the store and his apartment. The young workers didn’t seem particularly thrilled at an order at such an early time, but bagged the happy meal and toy without too much grumbling. The toy – a Hamburglar eraser – would later be scattered in small clumps on the living room floor, to relieve Carrie’s nervous picking habit. Arthur let it slide this one time.  
  
For having only ever lived with women, Arthur’s memory bank was coming up short on ever having discussed menstruation with his mother or his wife. It seemed to be a tightly-woven secret circle in which boys were never allowed – not that he ever wanted to be. He remembered Jocelyn only ever saying once “I got off the rag a few days ago,” and he supposed that was the night they got to work making Carrie. Jocelyn would have split personalities between the normal three weeks of the month and her one-week cycle. He always knew to keep his distance without any words having to be said.  
  
Sometimes having a daughter was not the picturesque life Arthur boasted it to be.  
  
Sometimes it meant trekking up the long flights of stairs to his apartment at 7:00 in the morning, deliriously tired, a happy meal in one hand, a crinkling plastic bag of pads in the other hand.  
  
Sometimes it was sitting awkwardly in the living room as his mother stood in the bathroom with his daughter, showing her how to clean blood with rubbing alcohol.  
  
Sometimes Carrie didn’t speak to him or any man for the rest of the day, only confiding in her grandmother for girl-to-girl talks that men had no place in. He knew he was only the delivery boy in situations like this.  
  
Sometimes the dial tone on the other end of the phone as Arthur tried again and again to call Jocelyn for advice made him want to tear the whole phone out of the wall and throw it out of the window.  
  
\- - - -  
  
“Arthur, the battleax is outside. She sounds pissed.”  
  
A trail of cigarette smoke followed dutifully behind Arthur as he put down his paint brush and walked to the lockers for a loose shirt. The amused glares from some of his coworkers, as well as Randall’s backhanded smirk, made the path to the stairs feel like a walk of shame. Like he was walking the six feet down into his own grave.  
  
Car horns honked as taxi cabs sped hazardously through the street in front of Ha Ha’s. A Doberman barked menacingly from the building several feet away, its leash tied around a bike rack. As he approached his ex-wife, though – her hands crossed over her chest, eyes narrowing with the readiness to spit snake venom – all the sounds faded into the background as Arthur sighed and claimed only one question.  
  
 _Who pissed in her cereal this morning?_  
  
“Ugh,” she said, bringing a hand up to shield her eyes from him. “I can’t look at you with only half your face painted. You look like an unfinished oil painting. Do you have to come out looking like that?”  
  
“You were the one who came by.” He took the cigarette out from between his teeth and licked his lips like the slobbering hound nearby, still barking. “I’m supposed to go to an elementary school today for an assembly.”  
  
“Oh, it wouldn’t happen to be Carrie’s school, would it? I’d hate for her to miss you there.” There was crabbiness to her tone that made his heartbeat spike. “Because they called me and said she isn’t there today.”  
  
He knew taking his sweet time, dragging in the smoke and exhaling it slowly, would piss her off. He had to fight off the urge to smile when he was right, and her head tilted in impatience.  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Well you know the school notifies the other parent to let them know the kid –”  
  
“Arthur, I’m _not_ fucking around. I called you twice. Where is she?”  
  
“She’s with my mom.”  
  
Jocelyn’s eyes widened. A look of near offense swept across her face, pursing her lips together further.  
  
“Arthur, your mother is nearly seventy and had Parkinson’s. What, are you crazy? What if –?”  
  
“Don’t call me crazy, I’m not crazy –”  
  
“- your mom falls and breaks her hip? Who’s supposed to call the ambulance? Carrie can’t even reach the phone. God, you’re senseless sometimes, I swear. Why is my daughter out of school? Why didn’t you call me?”  
  
Flashes of amusement had been pushing out puffs of breathy laughter with his cigarette smoke. At her last statement, though, he balked, and his half-painted, lopsided smile turned into a grimace.  
  
“I did call you. Three times, Joss! Maybe if you could bother to keep a damn phone nearby –”  
  
“I was busy in a meeting.”  
  
He nodded his head in mockery, scanning over her body.  
  
“Oh yeah, you were busy. Who was your meeting with? Keith? Why would you wear a running tracksuit to a business meeting?”  
  
“It was a _short_ meeting,” she gritted. Faintly, he saw her cheeks tint. Whether it was anger or embarrassment, it was a win on his end. “And how am I supposed to keep the phone open when you’re ringing me every other day with one question or another?”  
  
“I call you because your daughter misses her fucking mother and wants to talk to her!”  
  
A moment of recognition settled heavy into the air as the sounds of the city began to cut through. Jocelyn took in the burning anger that seemed to almost melt the grease paint from Arthur’s face, and Arthur took in the zing of hurt starting to pool in Jocelyn’s eyes.  
  
“I don’t know how you could spend all that time carrying her around in your stomach and go through all the trouble to bring her here,” Arthur said lowly, “and not want to be around your own daughter. I’ve been tending to Carrie since day one. _Day fucking one,_ Joss.”  
  
“I’m busy,” Jocelyn said carefully, voice trembling, “trying to provide for her. I love her.”  
  
“You’ve provided enough for yourself and your rich parties and your fucking boyfriend.” Somehow the danger of his words felt good, like the acidity of sour candy. “Carrie needs you to be a mom.”  
  
“I am a mother!”  
  
“You're her mother but you're not her mom.” His tone was rising. The fire in his chest flared, licking at his bones, making them tremble. “I called you three times this morning because Carrie got …” He caught himself. Looked around. Step forward. His voice dropped to a grave murmur. “Carrie got her period. She was freaking out. I was trying to call you to help her calm down.”  
  
“… Carrie got her period?”  
  
“I was expecting it to be on your time, but I guess I can only be so lucky.”  
  
Jocelyn straightened up, her arms tightening around herself further. What was a moment ago anger, he now saw as defense against hateful words – of which he’d long ago grown accustomed from the divorce. Their eyes softened.  
  
“I got her some pads – I think that’s what I was supposed to buy. I don’t know.” His eyes trailed down to the gravel. The smoke pooling into his mouth had an uncomfortably metallic taste to it. Dropping it to the ground, the gravel crunched loudly under his shoe. Smoke billowed from his mouth as he spoke, reminiscent of the many dragons that guarded little princesses in high towers that he had to read ad nauseam to a finicky toddler with persistent ear infections and runny noses. “We need better communication between us. I know we don’t really like each other like we used to, but Carrie needs the both of us sometimes. Not just one or the other.”  
  
“Don’t you think I want to be more available for her? I didn’t get in that goddamn mansion without a few sacrifices.”  
  
Arthur shook his head.  
  
“Carrie is non-negotiable. Next time I call you, Joss … pick up the fucking phone and pretend to care about your daughter.”


	6. Witches

“Mrs. Hearst, my music teacher – yesterday she announced next year’s school play.”  
  
They were resting on the couch, snuggled close, far removed from the rigid awkwardness of Thursday morning. It was Saturday night, and Carrie was due to go back to her mother’s the next evening. Arthur was barely paying attention to the screen. They’d flipped the channel to the Sound of Music once Murray Franklin was over. Occasionally spoiling her with breaking bed time wouldn’t hurt.  
  
“Oh yeah?” he beckoned, murmuring against her hair. She was askew next to him, her back to his slouched chest, her head resting on his shoulder. “And what would that be?”  
  
“The Wizard of Oz.”  
  
“Mm. And are you excited? Are you gonna audition?”  
  
“Daddy, I’ve been in the plays every year. Of course I’ll audition.”  
  
He shifted to look down at her, brows scrunched.  
  
“You weren’t in the one last year, were you?”  
  
“I was. I was Mrs. Merkle in Bye Bye Birdie. But everyone at Mom’s house got food poisoning so I couldn’t go to the shows.”  
  
“I don’t remember you being sick last year. You could’ve called me, Peanut, and I would’ve gotten you there.”  
  
At this, he felt her shrug against him. His hand maneuvered soothingly through her mesh of blonde hair. Her eyes traveled back to the television.  
  
“Bye Bye Birdie wasn’t that much fun anyway. I only had a few lines.”  
  
“But it was still _important_ to you. I know you like drama club. Next time, Peanut, tell me when you need a ride. I’ll _piggyback_ you to the school if I have to.”  
  
“Nana says you’re too skinny and won’t be able to carry me soon. Mom says I’m getting too chubby.”  
  
Ignorance. Pure ignorance. Carrie had the appetite of a grown man but had been as thin as a rake since she shed her baby weight. Her eating habits were reminiscent of her mother during her pregnancy – three slices of pizza, two slice of cake on her birthday, and only ever water to drink, if they could help it (“Eating for two,” as Joss once said, five months pregnant, wolfing down two plates of spaghetti). If it put some muscle in her then he didn’t see a problem. She more than made up for it by running him ragged at the park.  
  
“Wizard of Oz, huh? Y’know your mom almost named you after Judy Garland.”  
  
The classic Carrie nose scrunch of disregard. His heart swelled.  
  
“I wanna be the Scarecrow. Or one of the ballerina munchkins.”  
  
Oh god, the Scarecrow. Vividly he remembered Halloween of ’78. Jocelyn calling him in the evening. Carrie was pitching a fit (with such flair and intensity that he could hear her irate shrieking bouncing off the walls into the phone) because the Scarecrow outfit that Mommy had gotten her wasn’t as movie accurate as the Wicked Witch costume she saw at the thrift store near Daddy’s new apartment. Jocelyn was due to be hosting a Halloween party while Carrie went out trick or treating with her grandpa so could you _please do something, Arthur, and get her to be quiet, I have to make the food and she won’t stop **screaming –**_  
  
The problem, evidently, was the Scarecrow costume did not come equipped with actual straw sticking out of the hat and belly – something that Arthur had as much trouble explaining to the snotty, tearful child as Jocelyn did. In one of the few times he felt mounting frustration and an urge to shake his own daughter, Jocelyn allowed him to coat Carrie’s face and hands in her green eyeshadow, as it seemed the suggestion calmed her down somewhat. The tears stopped, much to their relief, and as Arthur patted gently at Carrie’s reddened, tear-stained face with emerald green powder, Jocelyn said, _“Now are you going to behave like this when you get to Daddy’s house next week? Little girls should not be allowed to trick or treat ever when they yell and scream.”_  
  
She made just about the most miserable little Wicked Witch Arthur had ever seen. It was almost comical, had she not been so exhausting.  
  
“The Scarecrow? Do you have a crush on the Scarecrow? You know you’re not allowed to like boys in this house,” he teased. “Are you gonna pitch a fit over your costume again?”  
  
“I’m eight, Daddy, I’m not five.”  
  
“You got your mom’s temper, though, that’s for sure.”  
  
“You’re mean,” she laughed.  
  
“Well I’m not running to your rescue if your costume isn’t perfect, Miss Prima Donna. What if you don’t get the Scarecrow? It might go to a boy. Will you promise to be okay with any role?”  
  
So many school plays. So many chorus parts. So many days secluded in her room, bawling her little eyes out because someone just a little older and just a little better got the part she wanted. So many nights of Joss and Arthur struggling to pick her out of the crowd of fifty other youngsters.  
  
Carrie’s heart was in the drama club and theatrics, just as her mother’s was. The problem was that her voice wasn’t.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“So you’re not gonna run in here and cry if you don’t get to be the munchkin you want? You pinky promise?”  
  
It was to Arthur’s knowledge that a pinky promise was among one of the most sacred pacts children could commit to. Too many times if he or Joss had to go against schedule, they were met with a teary scowl and “You pinky promised.” Her dainty finger was enveloped by his ragged one.  
  
“I promise, Daddy.”  
  
\- - - -  
  
Packing up a small red backpack took more out of him than it ideally should. Sundays were, half the time, days of dread. The dragging feet days. Carrie all sulking and refusing her breakfast, no matter how much he nagged her, and huffing and puffing as they hustled and bustled through the blocks to Gotham City Hall.  
  
It was raining. City transit it was.  
  
The sulking didn’t stop, from either of them, even if they were in public. She rested her legs against the seat in front of her and slunk down. Arthur stared aimlessly out the window until –  
  
The little boy in front of him was turned in his direction. Eyes wide, bottom lip pouting at Arthur contemplatively. Straightening up slightly, he felt the gut instinct to entertain start to rise.  
  
Carrie looked up at her father as he elicited a giggle from the boy in front of them. Pulling faces was delighting him. Her father seemed not to mind. He looked to be prideful and enjoying –  
  
“Could you please stop bothering my kid?”  
  
Her eyes snapped to the irate mother, now turned to face them briefly before she pulled her son away. Nervously, Carrie looked to her father, whose face was frozen in play still. She saw the spark of trepidation that stayed glued to the back of the woman’s head.  
  
“I wasn’t bothering him, I –”  
  
“Just _stop.”  
_  
In the moments between the woman’s grumbling and her father’s wailing laughter, Carrie heard the miserable whine in his throat. It was a warning. She wished they would’ve walked in the rain. The look of misery in his face as he laughed beyond his control made her face burn.  
  
“You think this is _funny?_ ” the woman accused.  
  
There were times as a small child where Carrie, not understanding, would have laughed with him. He looked desperately foolish as he shook his head at the woman, cackling still.  
  
“No, I have a – _ta ha ha!”  
_  
He pulled out the faithful laminated card.  
  
 _ **It’s a medical condition causing sudden,**_  
 _ **Frequent and uncontrollable laughter that doesn’t match how you feel.**_  
 _ **It can happen in people with a brain injury or certain neurological conditions.**_  
 _ **Thank you!**_  
  
Carrie watched the woman turn towards her howling father briefly, before sharply turning back in her seat and trying quite hard to block out the shrieking laughter. A deep crimson emerged onto Carrie’s face as she slinked forward to grab the dropped card and wished – not for the first time in her life – that she could shut out the world from her head the way it seemed to shut them out all the time.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The rain had lowered from ominous fat water droplets to light flakes that made her crinkle her nose. Playfully, her father swung their arms as they walked, and she had to bite down to stop a smile from creeping through.  
  
“Just think, Peanut,” he cut through the tense, foggy air. “Next week I’ll get you all to myself for sixteen days. How’s that make you feel?”  
  
“Excited,” she responded. The thought did send a little flutter through her belly (she knew she would be admonished if she admitted to it – she could only stomach three bites of toast). “I’ll make a list of stuff we need to do for fun, and you make a list, too. Then we’ll go through them.”  
  
“I’ll get right on it, chief. You have any ideas in mind?”  
  
“The ice cream shop. You told me you were going to take me there on my birthday. I was hyping myself up for a caramel walnut sundae and I’m disappointed.”  
  
A genuine, warm laugh breezed past. He stared down at her as they walked.  
  
“You were quick with that one. I promise then, next week we’ll go to the ice cream shop, first thing. Which one, though – Gotham Sundae on Pacific or Cherry Knox near our house?”  
  
“We can go to Cherry Knox. I don’t want you to have to spend a lot of money.” Her tone was soft, and it took Arthur a second to recognize the squeeze of her little fingers around his calloused hand. “We need it for more important things.”  
  
“Peanut,” he sighed. “I don’t get to spoil you as much as I want. Not the way Mom does. I don’t want you worrying about money. When I hit the big clubs, I’m taking you wherever you wanna go and buying you as much ice cream as your sweet tooth can handle.”  
  
Carrie had stopped so suddenly, without warning, that Arthur took a few steps forward still and nearly wrenched her forward with him. When he looked back at her, she was wide eyed, standing completely still.  
  
“Carrie.”  
  
 _“Hey, Carrie!”_  
  
Arthur’s eyes trailed to the source of the booming noise. A sharply-dressed grey suit leaning against the open driver’s door of a polished and pristine silver car. What it was doing in this part of Gotham he had no idea.  
  
“You ready to go, kiddo? Your mom got caught up in an emergency meeting and asked me to come getcha.”  
  
Following further upward, as time seemed to grind to a halt, the suit and the car were accessorized by a muscular, clean-shaven young man whose dark brown hair was slicked back, and who looked at Carrie with warmth that stirred a strange feeling in Arthur’s gut. The man seemed to be so transfixed on her that it took him several seconds to notice Arthur at all. When he did, his features tightened a little and he took a deep breath.  
  
“You’re Arthur Fleck?”  
  
There was a beat where Arthur couldn’t quite tell if the man was disbelieving of his shabby appearance or not.  
  
“Yes. I’m Carrie’s father.”  
  
At the affirmation, the man grinned and extended his hand. After a moment, Arthur returned the gesture in a firm handshake, having freed his hand out of Carrie’s tight grip.  
  
“Keith Robbins. Jocelyn’s partner.”  
  
“Her partner? Nice to meet you. I’m Jocelyn’s whipping boy.”  
  
Keith, retracting his hand, closed the car door and took a slow step toward the pair. Carrie hadn’t moved at all.  
  
“Kiddo, we gotta get going soon. Your mom and I are taking you to Brimstone Pizza for your birthday dinner. She invited your grandma and grandpa, too. They’re expecting us in two hours so we gotta get you washed and ready.”  
  
“I already had pizza,” Carrie said quickly. “Daddy bought some for my birthday party. We can eat at home.”  
  
“Carrie,” Arthur responded, a little taken aback by her abrasiveness. He gave her hand a squeeze. “You love Brimstone. Don’t be rude.”  
  
“Daddy, I –”  
  
“Carrie _Frances.”  
_  
She looked at him with faint surprise. He’d hardly ever gritted his voice at her before. Sighing, he crouched down to her level, steeling himself from the sadness that had washed over her face.  
“Your mom wants to take you out for dinner, and your grandparents would love to see you and spoil you with presents. Wouldn’t you like to see Grandma and Grandpa?”  
  
Her little sneakers shifted on the sidewalk and she turned a quick glance to the City Hall building before softly nodding her head. Furiously, she swiped a piece of hair from her face.  
  
“I’m tired, though,” she said. “I wanna go to sleep.”  
  
“Well it’ll be easier to sleep with a lot of pizza in your belly.”  
  
The idea did little to improve her spirit. She glowered at the pavement, and then at him, with a pathetic tear streaming down her cheek.  
  
“But I wanna stay at your house.”  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _What a lovely day it was. What a supremely lovely, sunshine-charged day.  
_  
 _A jaunty whistle caught Arthur’s attention as the front door opened. Looking up from the collection of bills on the table, he saw a stocky girl in a pink shirt, pursing her lips and whistling a merry Disney tune. It took a while, but he recognized it as something from Snow White. A purple scrunchie around her wrist disappeared from view as she quickly tied it around her blonde mesh of hair. From across the room, her roving eyes met his. They smiled at each other.  
_  
 _“Good day today?”  
_  
 _“As good as high school can be,” she replied, making a beeline toward the fridge. Never empty, as it had been some forgotten years ago. “I got a C on my physics test.”  
_  
 _“The one we studied so hard for?” The widening of her eyes and the grip that she had on the bottle of vitamin water made him sigh in dismay, turning back to the table to cast away the bills. “We’ll have to study more next time.”  
_  
 _“Well it’s hard to stay on my grades right now, Daddy. You know the diner’s been overworking me since spring break is coming up soon. I can't be the only one of my friends with a license and without a car.”  
_  
 _She sat down in the chair next to his and rested her elbows on the table – something the Other might admonish her for, but with her out of the picture, the road was paved for Arthur and Carrie to do as they pleased. Their house had been their rule-free haven for eight blissfully motherless years.  
_  
 _“Carrie, I’m making enough money to support three families and then some. We moved to Denver so I could afford a nice house, and you know as far as I’m concerned, you don’t have to have a job until after you graduate. You're only sixteen, y'know.”  
_  
 _“Well who’s going to pay for my car? You already do so much; I don’t want you to have to pay for it.”  
_  
 _A ghost of a smirk crawled into the corners of his lips as he held up a slip of paper. Reading the logo, she gasped. It was the receipt for the coveted Mazda Chantez she'd had her heart set on since he took her to the car dealership the month before. In secret, he sneaked out from a day at the writer's room and made a negotiation for the car to be presented on her birthday.  
_  
 _ **“Daddy!”** she exclaimed. “You didn’t have to do that!”  
_  
 _He begged to differ. The way she flew from her seat, smile widening, to throw her arms around him in a bone-crushing hug and smother his forehead in kisses made him beg to differ._  
  
Some day.  
  
Arthur sat in front of his work mirror, blotting his forehead lightly with the cakey white paste, neglecting the fact that a single tear smudged his cheek as it melded with the dark blue of his eye makeup.  
  
The pain of his nails cutting into his gums as he forced his mouth into a Cheshire grin broke him. His face receded to resignation he'd forced himself to get used to: _just get through to Sunday._  
  
 _Every time she has to leave, she puts your happiness in her backpack._  
  
Some day. Someday very soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Carrie throwing a fit over her costume is an anecdote from my own childhood. I vividly remember being supremely upset that the Scarecrow costume my mom bought me wasn't exactly like in the movie and cried til I got a Wicked Witch costume (I do not condone pitching a fit to get your way at all hgsjhksj).
> 
> Feel free to comment and leave constructive criticism - what you like, don't like, what you want to see more of, etc. Thank you all who are checking this story out and leaving kudos! I love you!


	7. In a Heartbeat

Sometimes Arthur felt like his life was some sort of sad comedy.  
  
Chaplin reincarnated.  
  
Where was the one about the happy-sad clown left to die on the wet alley floor because some hoodlums stole his sign and kicked his shit in? Did Chaplin write that one?  
  
Every muscle in Arthur’s body that had come into contact with a dirty sneaker groaned in anger at the aftereffect. He knew he was going to feel extra disgusted in the shower tonight when he looked down to see a bony bag of flesh adorned with cuts and fresh scabs and bruises.  
  
He didn’t try to compare Mondays because it depressed him too much, but _damn_ , this was one of the worst in a while.  
  
The old Spanish drug store clerk gave him a pitying smile when she handed him the prescription bag, same as every weekend. He couldn’t remember if he smiled back as always. He hoped he did. She was one of the few nice ones left.  
  
He wondered what Peanut’s weekly report for school was today.  
  
 _It was my birthday last week. I turned eight, and Daddy told me not to get older. Daddy and I ate pizza, but we couldn’t tell Mom. We like to keep secrets from Mom because she doesn’t understand us. Someone at my party knocked over a table lamp and broke the light bulb. I got lots of art supplies and a clown showed up. Just my dad, but not in his makeup. Mom got me clothes and a card with a bird, even though she knows I hate birds. I wish my mom could try to get to know me. I wish my mom knew when to be a mom. I wish I could choose when to live with my mom. Never. I hate my mom._  
 ~~ _I hate my mom._~~  
  
“She _loves you,_ though.”  
  
The fat orange clump of a cat knew exactly when to play his cards right. As the front door closed, and Arthur blocked the cat’s vantage point for jumping with his shoe, Auggie began to purr and nuzzle his furry head against the exposed area of Arthur’s ankle. Seconds later, he flopped on the ground, exposing his belly to signify a plea for scratches.  
  
Although his muscles ached in protest of their bruised hell, he complied, letting the cat bury his head into his owner’s hand. A thumb scratched affectionately behind a flickering ear.  
  
“She likes you more than she likes me.”  
  
 _“Happy, did you get the mail?”_  
  
Arthur wished he would’ve just stayed on the ground permanently. His knees flared when he attempted to stand up and hand his jacket near the front door.  
  
“Yeah, Ma,” he called. “Nothing.”  
  
What was once Carrie’s old room was now an awkward blend of child and adult with no in-between – much like what his room was now. It didn’t mesh together well at all. Carrie’s vanity, smudged somewhat from her (thankfully short-lived) phase of eating flavored chap stick and practicing kisses on the mirror, was now an overflowing home for his mom’s outdated, crusty makeup tubes and smelly perfumes. The childish drawings tacked on the wall and magazine cutouts of David Bowie felt so out of place against his mom’s pink poinsettia wallpaper and soft yellow-quilted bed. Especially as she was currently lying in it, fixated on the TV as Arthur brought in the dinner tray. She didn’t notice him wincing as he set down the added weight. Sometimes he wondered if she would notice if he hopped in the door with his foot ripped off.  
  
“He must not be getting my letters,” she said quietly.  
  
“It’s Thomas Wayne, Mom,” he said stiffly, busying himself with cutting the dry,reheated pork on her plate. “He’s a busy man.”  
  
“Please. I worked for that family for years. He always had a smile for me. The least he could do is write back.”  
  
“Eat, Ma. You need to eat.”  
  
At he settled the tray over her frail form and settled into the guest chair beside the bed, she reached out a hand to tug lightly at his own wraith-like frame.  
  
 _“You_ need to eat. Look how skinny you are.”  
  
Before he could think of a reply, she pointed to the TV.  
  
“All day long, it’s more bad news,” she continued. “That’s all there is.”  
  
“Maybe you shouldn’t watch so much television.”  
  
“Thomas Wayne is our only hope. He’ll make a great mayor. Everybody says so.”  
  
He brushed a hand to swipe his hair back before setting her with an amused look – the best smile he could hope to give that day.  
  
“Oh, everybody?” he joked. “Everybody _who?_ Who do you talk to?”  
  
“Everybody on the news,” she said, and gestured with her fork. “He’s the only one who can save this city. He owes it to us.”  
  
Arthur was sure that some of the lower class of Gotham was owed something. What he wasn’t sure of was if Thomas Wayne was the charitable sort.  
  
 _"From NCB Studio in Gotham City, it's Live with Murray Franklin!"_  
  
Thank _god._  
  
Arthur rounded the bed and took his traditional spot next to his mother, letting the conversation falter as the dim little television rose the curtain on a more colorful world than their four walls.  
  
"Oh, Sandra Winger's on tonight," his mother said with dimming interest.  
  
 _"Joining Murray as always, Ellis Drane and his Jazz Orchestra! Now, without further ado, Murraaay Franklin!"  
_  
 _Murray was dressed real good tonight, doing the old soft shoe routine that put the audience in hysterics.  
_  
 _Of course he was always dressed great. A three-piece navy blue suit, though, was hard to beat. Arthur wondered if the suit came from Astor's or Vanderbilt's.  
_  
 _The crowd was wild in its fervor. Arthur could scarcely hear his own clapping and hollering as it melded with the wall of cheers and whistles and brassy music that engulfed him, warm and dark and exhilarating and beautiful all the same; for once he was glad to be almost invisible._  
 _No, not invisible. Just among them.  
_  
 _The shower of praise washed over Arthur. Only one thing in the world could have made it better.  
_  
 _"Daddy, I can't believe we're here!"  
_  
 _The hand tugging at the sleeve of his elbow - his expensive, finely-dressed tweed jacket that was so nice and becoming of such a fine man - pulled herself upright, eyes ablaze, grin almost ferocious in her unending eagerness. The hand itself was attached to a shimmering gold dress with elegant sleeves and a bow at the waist. She looked every bit the wealth he bought them into.  
_  
 _She belonged.  
_  
 _"Thank you," Murray exclaimed, losing his voice in the mass of applause. "It's great to have you here. We got a great looking audience tonight."  
_  
 _The semi-contained cheers reverberated in an uncontained uproar. Arthur wondered, though he cared very little, if his hollering stuck out among them. For a moment, he swore - not hoped, he swore he saw Murray's eyes land on him; his uncontrollable clapping, his gleaming smile that for the first time reached his eyes.  
_  
 _"Who's that there? Hey Bobby, could you raise the lights for me?"  
_  
 _The dimmed lights that secluded him as just a face among the faceless suddenly brightened, casting him in a strangely iridescent glow that also widened the adoration gleaming in his daughter's eyes. This, he concluded, was the absolute best part.  
_  
 _"You there - will you stand up? What's your name?"  
_  
 _There was the hand on his sleeve again, this time pushing instead of pulling.  
_  
 _"Stand up, Daddy."  
_  
 _Arthur became acutely aware, only then, that all eyes, all cameras, all lights were on him. Murray's finger was pointing at him. Murray picked him from the crowd --  
_  
 _He was standing, feeling as though his head had submerged in a cloud of confidence that allowed him to know what to do with his hands, how to smile, how not to laugh.  
_  
 _"Hi, Murray. Arthur," he announced. "My name is Arthur."  
_  
 _"There's something special about you, Arthur, I can tell," Murray concluded. "Where you from?"  
_  
 _"I live right here in the city, with my mother and my daughter."  
_  
 _His gaze flitted to Carrie, ever the beauty. Her smile had softened from its fanatical joy to an adoring contentment, richer than the gold trimmings that lined the hem of her dress.  
_  
 _A few smatterings of teasing laughter rolled off his shoulders like water.  
_  
 _"Hold on, hold on - there's nothing funny about that," Murray exclaimed, his hands up in protest against the gentle ribbing. "I lived with my mother before I made it. It was just me and her. I'm the kid whose father went out for a pack of cigarettes, and he never came back."  
_  
 _The generic awes of a sympathetic audience inflicted a wince of sympathy out of Arthur; for the first time, it was not for himself, and there was an inexpressible satisfaction in that.  
_  
 _"I know what that's like, Murray," he replied. "I've been the man of the house for as long as I remember. I take good care of my girls."  
_  
 _"Is that your little girl with you?"  
_  
 _The hand suddenly shifted to Carrie, whose face burned a brilliant crimson color of meek embarrassment. He understood it. This was his moment and she didn't want to hog it. The applause made her face burn brighter.  
_  
 _"Beautiful, isn't she?" Arthur declared, unable to keep the proud grin off his face.  
_  
 _"All that sacrifice, they must love you very much," Murray said.  
_  
 _"They do. My mother always tells me to smile and put on a happy face. She says I was put here to spread joy and laughter."  
_  
 _"What?" Murray asked. There was a twinge of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Could you say that again?"  
_  
 _The self-satisfied grin transformed into a positively beaming grin of pride. It was as incredible as it was unfamiliar.  
_  
 _"She told me I had a purpose," he repeated, "to bring laughter and joy into the world."  
_  
 _The applause. The hollers and cheers and whistles. Just for him. Only for him.  
_  
 _The hand was now on his pant leg, simultaneously pulling and pushing.  
_  
 _"Daddy, go up there!"  
_  
 _The stage lights were hot under the weight of his tweed coat. He felt almost weightless as Murray - the real Murray, in the flesh, looking straight at him - grabbed his hand and raised it in triumph. He'd made it.  
_  
 _He'd made it.  
_  
 _"Okay, we got a big show tonight, so stay tuned and we'll be right back," Murray said to the camera.  
_  
 _The crowd contented themselves to a lulling murmur, sounding to Arthur like soul music. Easily visible in the crowd was Carrie, his beautiful, beautiful Peanut, smiling wildly at him from her seat. He reciprocated it with tears of unrestrained happiness.  
_  
 _Another hand rested on his arm. This one older, warmer, with a ring on the pinky finger, and attached to a great navy sleeve._  
  
 _"That was great, Arthur, thanks. I loved hearing what you had to say. Made my day."_  
  
 _There was something tugging at his chest, something warm and bleary but so passionate in its intensity that Arthur could only stand with that goofy smile on his face as Murray looked at him._  
  
 _"Thanks, Murray," he murmured. "You know, I grew up without a dad, too. And Carrie's mom left not very long ago, so I'm trying to just be the best that I can for her. My dad left right after I was born. I don't know what I ever did to him -"_  
  
 _"Fuck them," Murray spat. A small leap in Arthur's heart radiated like a kerosene heater. "Guys like that don't deserve you, Arthur, and women who run out certainly don't deserve that little girl. You're all she needs and I can tell you're doing a great job with her. You see all this, the lights, the show, the audience, I'd give it all up in a heartbeat to have a son like you."_  
  
 _The hug that Murray pulled him in to was like none he'd ever felt. It was engrossing, protecting. It said 'I'm listening to you.'_  
  
 _He hoped to god that he'd passed down the same message, the same hugs to Carrie._  
  
The luminescent blue lights from the TV cast a great, Carrie-sized glow on the vacant space between Arthur and his mother. He smiled gently to himself. It was okay to dream at least a little.  
  
  
\- - - -  
  
He forgot that the bruises always felt worse after some rest.  
  
Work was hell when he - not for the first time - was perched near the lockers, straining his muscles to loosen the leather of his work shoes. It wouldn't be as hard if he didn't feel the disconnection of his muscles with every slight movement. He knew it looked as though his shoulder was about to pop out of its socket, and how much it unnerved his coworkers.  
  
It wasn't hard to rationalize why they kept their distance. That didn't make it hurt any less.  
  
"You okay?"  
  
He looked up, startled by the rarity of the question reserved for him. It was Randall, the big bear of a know-it-all. As he opened his locker to shove his dry-cleaned clown suit inside, his eyes flickered to Arthur.  
  
"I heard about the beat down you took," Randall continued. "Fuckin' savages."  
  
A puff of strained laughter pushed through Arthur's nose. He went back to his work on the shoes.  
  
"It was just a bunch of kids. I should've left it alone."  
  
"No," Randall countered. He seemed to be rummaging through his locker, searching for - "They'll take everything from you if you do that."  
  
Arthur nodded tightly, not wanting to disagree but too anxious to continue the conversation much further.  
  
"My mother says people today lack empathy," he added.  
  
"What's empathy?"  
  
"It means 'feeling for other people.'"  
  
"Like sympathy?"  
  
He stopped, considering.  
  
"Kind of. But different."  
  
A "hmph" noise cued Arthur to leave the conversation as it was, and he graciously stopped talking and continued his work on the shoes. The rumple of what sounded like paper caught his attention. In a thick fist, Randall was holding out to him a paper bag, which he took with a hint of trepidation. What on _earth -_  
  
He identified silver first. A beam of sunlight bounced right into the bag and almost blinded him with its white intensity. Then he realized.  
  
A laugh got stuck in his throat - not aggravated, but anxious still.  
  
"Randall," he whispered, sounding clipped. "I'm not supposed to have a gun."  
  
"Take it. You gotta protect yourself out there, or you're gonna get fucked."  
  
 _"Randall -"_  
  
"Don't sweat it," he insisted. The beams of light now cast a strange half-shadow over Randall's face, making him look as shrouded in secret as he looked spiritual. "No one has to know. And you can pay me back some other time. You know you're my boy."  
  
Something about that made him smile, despite himself. Arthur was never really anybody's anything. Son, father, ex-husband? Sure. But not a _friend,_ not a _boy._  
  
"Arthur - Hoyt wants to see you in his office."  
  
That was Gary, he recognized. The guy got some flack for being a dwarf, and Arthur was ashamed that he partook in the playful ribbing. Gary was the only one who remembered to ask how he was feeling. He was the only one to ask Arthur to let him know when Carrie was feeling better when the tyke fell ill with the flu over the holidays.  
  
"Hey Gary, you know what I've always wondered?"  
  
Arthur walked past them, wincing. Gary knew what was coming, but asked "What?" anyway.  
  
"Do you people call it miniature golf, or is it just golf to you?"  
  
Randall and his cohorts laughed at the joke like it was the Taj Mahal of comedy. Arthur settled on a smile and buttoning his shirt, unsure himself if he was in a position to be laughing, especially at Gary's expense.  
  
Hoyt was at his desk, positioned with a pen in one hand and the other hand hovering over the ash tray, dispensing a heap of smoldering grey ashes. Arthur never liked Hoyt's office. It was littered with newspapers and bulletins and uncomfortable chairs that reminded him somewhat of his social worker's office.  
  
"How's the comedy career?" Hoyt asked, not bothering to look up. "You a famous stand-up yet?"  
  
At least Hoyt remembered.  
  
"No, not yet. Just been working on my material."  
  
His voice was soft, simmering just above the surface, like a child imposing a facade of innocence to ease a tide of inevitable punishment. Arthur didn't know what he was being punished for, but he felt like he knew it was coming. Punishment had a way of finding him in some form.  
  
Hoyt set his pen down and looked at Arthur with what he immediately recognized as irritation. Something tinted as sympathy was visible only for a second, but masked by the dominating negativity.  
  
"Look Arthur, I like you. A lot of the guys, they think you're a freak - but I like you. I don't even know why I like you. Maybe it's 'cause I know you're barely scraping by with that kid and I feel bad or something. I don't know."  
  
Arthur nodded tightly, unsure if a response was appropriate.  
  
"But I got another complaint. It's starting to piss me off. Kenny's Music - the guy says you disappeared ... never even returned his sign ..."  
  
There was a deep breath on both ends. Something in Arthur's chest wound tightly like a fist.  
  
"Because I got jumped," he explained, not daring to raise his voice any higher. "Didn't you hear?"  
  
"Over a sign?" A coy smile from Hoyt - one that Arthur recognized in many previous encounters not dissimilar to this one - stirred something he didn't want to acknowledge was anger, but couldn't be anything else. "That's bullshit. He's going out of business, for god's sake, Arthur!"  
  
"... why would I keep his sign?"  
  
 _"How the fuck do I know?_ Why does anybody do anything? Listen, if you don't return the sign, I gotta take it out of your paycheck, are we clear?"  
  
Arthur looked and looked.  
  
And smiled. He kept smiling.  
  
 _Smile til it hurts._  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur's knee hurt.  
  
Step after step after step _after step after step after -  
_  
Thank _god_ this wasn't a Carrie week.  
  
What had he even hit that twisted his knee so bad?  
  
Garbage -  
  
No, it was an old dog.  
  
No, no. Arthur could never be so cruel. It was something that whined, but it wasn't a dog. Not, _never_ an animal.  
  
A homeless man. As innocent and innocuous and faceless as the man who stomped his guts out.  
  
Maybe it was Hoyt. Was it Hoyt?  
  
Arthur hoped it was Hoyt.  
  
Something in the thrashing and stomping and smashing and kicking twisted Arthur's leg, and he continued raging anyway, kicking and kicking and _kicking_ until he was rage and then he was nothing.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur's knee developed a great blue welt from the thrashing. He definitely felt it when he sat down to give his mother a bath.  
  
He didn't mention it, tried not to acknowledge it, but he definitely felt it.  
  
He didn't mention much from the day while he soaped his mother's hair.  
  
"Look up," he said softly, filling a plastic contained with warm, sudsy water. It washed away the soap, the grime, the grit that came with living in such a disgusting city with a sparse water supply.  
  
'Cleanliness is next to godliness' was an oft-repeated phrase she claimed during his childhood. It was one of the few things that stuck with him through the years.  
  
"He must not be getting my letters," she mused, smiling through the sputtering of soapy residue on her thin lips.  
  
"Ma, why are these letters so important to you? What do you think he's gonna do?"  
  
"He's gonna help us."  
  
There was a sigh that escaped him before he could stifle it. He let the contained float in the bath water and looked at his mother.  
  
"Help us how?"  
  
"Get us out of here, take me away from this place and these ... these people."  
  
He pretended not to hear that. As much as she was right, and he was trying hard, he really was trying to do good for his family of three, it hurt that it wasn't enough.  
  
He was angry that it wasn't enough. He didn't know who to be angry at. He settled on himself.  
  
"You worked for him ... what? Thirty years ago? What makes you think he'd help us?"  
  
The humor in his eyes was swiped when he saw the conviction in her own. It looked like Carrie. It hurt.  
  
"Thomas Wayne is a good man," she repeated. "If he knew how we were living ... if he saw this place - it would make him sick ..."  
  
He nodded. He was annoyed, but it was hardly worth an argument. What was really at stake at this point? His feelings of inadequacy as the breadwinner? It was hardly debatable.  
  
"I don't want you worrying about money, Ma. Or me. Everybody's been telling me my stand-up's ready for the big clubs. It's just a matter of time before I get my break."  
  
"Happy ... what makes you think you can do that?"  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"I mean ..." Her shoulders slumped. "Don't you have to be funny to be a comedian?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we are in real movie territory.
> 
> The shift in dialogue is deliberate. I'm going off the script I found online before the movie came out (BY THE WAY, ALL RIGHTS AND CHARACTERS OUTSIDE OF MY HOMEGIRLS CARRIE AND JOSS AND SUCH BELONG TO WARNER BROS AND TODD PHILLIPS)
> 
> I wanted to shift the story away from Carrie, but keeping her influence over Arthur as she's away from him. There will be more of this as a plot point later on (tee hee, sneaky author)
> 
> Please, feel free to comment and let me know what you think! I love and appreciate feedback and constructive responses!


	8. Constraint

Anticipating Carrie's arrival always felt like anticipating a bomb detonating, be it her birth or his weekly pickup. Something big was going to happen, and it would happen regardless of if he was ready or not. Taking her home from the hospital and any time from then on after the custody agreement was like a crater had decimated his old, childless life.  
  
There was both good and bad to be found in that.  
  
His freedom to go outside alone was restricted, as though he was once again the child who had to have accompaniment, because _god forbid_ Carrie be left alone with her grandmother for a few hours. She could be annoying and loud, as children inescapably were. Apparently she shied away from the rest of the world and only showed her extroverted half to her father, reminding him crudely and sometimes painfully of her crudely and painfully social mother.  
  
 ~~ _I want some space but not all alone  
_~~  
He felt partially responsible of robbing Joss of invaluable bonding time when they got back from the hospital, and he was a nervous wreck and her body resentfully took its time healing and her hormones bounced off the walls. He'd lost count of how many "I got its" escaped him in a bleary, clockwork state, and he took the opportunity to cradle the baby in the crook of his leg and bottle feed her, looking deeply into her eyes _(wow, my eyes)_ while Joss slept and slept and slept because _if we have more kids, our sleep schedule will be fucked beyond belief.  
_  
Now she was an awkward 30-something with a daughter she didn't know, because Arthur was selfish in his responsibilities as a father.  
  
He still wanted to be selfish as a father. It was easy to rattle off the stresses in his every day life that Carrie brought only because holy _hell,_ the smile she reserved for him could melt cold butter. Beautiful, beautiful, _beautiful.  
_  
Even if she tripped up the courthouse steps in her pursuit of him, his ex-wife in tow with the dingy brown suitcases.  
  
"All mine for two weeks," he said, grinning as she threw her arms around his neck.  
  
"Two weeks and two days," she reminded him.  
  
Ah, lest he forgot. His hand coiled around her ribcage, half-tempted to impulsively throw her over his shoulder and run away with her, the both of them giggling madly.  
  
Jocelyn sighed from several paces away, setting the suitcases on the ground. He stood to grab them, motioning for Carrie to stay.  
  
"I took her to the doctor on Tuesday - you need to make sure she uses the doctor-prescribed shampoo," Jocelyn said.  
  
"Why?"  
  
He was eager to send Joss on her happy way to Albany and get his two-week vacation with his daughter on the move, but some sense of civility had to filter between them, whether he was the only one trying or not.  
  
"Because her dandruff is getting worse. The doctor thinks it might turn into psoriasis if we don't get on it immediately."  
  
"So she got your skin conditions," he quipped. A soft blush tinted Joss' high cheekbones like red apples.  
  
"Just make sure she uses it," Joss clipped. "I had to practically hold he down to get it on her scalp."  
  
"Okay, I'll stay on it."  
  
"The doctor recommended every other night, so I packed two bottles just in case. You know how expensive things are now? Fifteen dollars per bottle, Jesus H."  
  
Unsure of what to say, he nodded and made a "Mm" noise of distant agreement. Prices were going up recently, but he felt like voicing such concerns to Joss might result in ridicule for him never being able to buy the more expensive things Carrie needed.  
  
He looked back at her, swiping a hand over his nose. It was getting ready to rain soon.  
  
"Carrie, come say bye to your mom."  
  
She was quicker on her feet than if the situation was reversed. A pang of guilt was exceeded by a heart swelling with satisfaction and pride. _Someone_ loved him.  
  
Carrie stood at eye-level with Joss, who bent down to rest her hands on Carrie's arms. One hand brushed a few gold strands out of Carrie's face.  
  
"You have everything you need - your toothbrush, your toys?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Do you have your shampoo?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Carrie, do you really have your shampoo?"  
  
 _"Yes,_ Mom," Carrie stressed, walking the line between annoyed and amused.  
  
"Just wanted to make sure, darling, so your head can get better." Joss offered her a tight smile. Arthur barely recognized the warm motherly affection, but it was there. "I'm going to call you tonight when we get to Albany. I don't know when we'll be busy or not, so I'll call you, okay?"  
  
"Mm."  
  
"Gimme a hug."  
  
Arthur tilted his head, observing curiously that Joss enveloped Carrie in the embrace, whereas Carrie just ... leaned in slightly, letting her body be taken in but putting in no effort to reciprocate.  
  
He should work on that with her before Joss notices later on.  
  
Two glossy lipstick-stained kisses to the cheek and "I love you, Carrie's" later and Joss was back in her car. Arthur's hand enveloped his daughter's, and they went on their way.  
  
They walked in amiable silence, too excited to properly focus on one topic. Gotham was too boisterous to hold a conversation anyway. Instead, Arthur let their arms swing lazily in contentment on their walk to the apartment, intent on making it a good stay.  
  
"Can we go to Cherry Knox?"  
  
Well, as good a stay as was in his power.  
  
"Bad news, Peanut," he winced. "Cherry Knox is closed for construction for the next month."  
  
She looked up at him, just narrowly missing a pack of rowdy hoodlums rushing past.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yeah, the storm a few days ago blew the windows clean in, so they gotta buy sturdier glass."  
  
"Oh," she muttered, her head slouching.  
  
"We'll get you something, though. I promise. We can go to Gotham Sundae tomorrow."  
  
There was the squeeze to his hand, nearly indecipherable with how dainty hers was.  
  
"We don't have to," she confided. "They're too expensive. We should spend our money on important things."  
  
She smiled up at him, and something in his stomach flipped. Guilt. Guilt and euphoria. A strange combination.  
  
\- - - -  
  
It was rare that somebody was willing to be a test audience for his new material.  
  
Carrie was _never_ allowed to touch his therapy journal.  
  
But it was a ritual between them to sit on the couch, cross-legged, and for him to tell her jokes as she rehearsed being the stoic audience. It had taken some effort to get her to not laugh at every joke and to take it more seriously than she believed they should. Eventually she learned to enjoy it.  
  
She was a hard cookie to sell, though. It challenged him to do better when evenings would go by without his own daughter laughing at his material.  
  
"I don't think the audience wants to hear the jokes you think I think are funny," Carrie observed, half an hour in. He swallowed. His throat was dry.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Grown ups think other things are funny that I don't think are funny," she explained, resting her chin on two little fists. "Like how I think cartoons are funny, but Mom doesn't care about them."  
  
"That's cause your mom doesn't think anything is funny," he muttered, flitting through page after page. "Okay, how about this one?"  
  
He tapped the page, letting a silence of anticipation permeate as he readied himself.  
  
"Why are poor people always confused?"  
  
His eyes darted to Carrie, briefly, watching the raising of her blonde brows as she anticipated the punchline.  
  
"Because they don't have any _cents,"_ he concluded. Her head tilted in overfamiliar pity.  
  
"Daddy," she sighed. "You're funnier than that."  
  
"Okay fine, you little buzzkill," he muttered, flicking through more pages, pushing it up and out of her sight when his magazine clippings peered through the pages. "Okay, okay. Why did the chicken cross the road?"  
  
A sigh. She long ago expended her patience.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"To get to the boxhead's house." Her eyebrows rose again, feigning sympathy. "Fine. Knock knock."  
  
"Daddy, nobody likes knock knock jokes. _I_ don't even like knock knock jokes."  
  
 _"Carrie."  
_  
 _"Fine,"_ she heaved. A laugh was bit back when she threw herself back against the arm of the couch, arms flailing. The flair for dramatics from both her mother and father would one day come back to bite them. "Who's there?"  
  
"The chicken."  
  
A lip-sucking pout accompanied a stifled puff of laughter she tried fiercely to hide. When it subsided, she looked at him.  
  
"That's not gonna make the audience laugh," she concluded.  
  
"No, but it made _you_ laugh," he ribbed, "and that's what I care about tonight."  
  
"Sometimes I think you care about my opinion too much."  
  
"That can never be possible," he concluded, pushing forward to spin the girl and pull her against him. It was a rare dad and daughter evening when his mother retired to bed early, claiming to be too fatigued to push through dinner. He loved his mother, but Carrie nights alone were unbeatable. Her love was etched into his bones. The seed of the universe that opened his eyes and called his name and made him _feel.  
_  
"Okay," he said quietly, running his thumb along her arm soothingly. "I have one more joke."  
  
"Mm."  
  
"Why was Cinderella so bad at sports?"  
  
His coarse hands intertwined with her soft pink ones, warming them.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because her coach was a pumpkin."  
  
He bit his lip, waiting. He could see the wheels in her head turning, slow as they were, when she began to sit up and unclasped one of her hands from his. A brow furrowed in thought.  
  
She wheezed a high keen of laughter. Real, genuine, childish laughter that felt like rubbing alcohol on a bad night, clean and pure and soothing to his ears.  
  
When she looked at him, he saw himself, but human.  
  
"Can we watch Poor Cinderella?" she asked, biting her lip in contemplation.  
  
"We can watch whatever you want, Peanut."  
  
The Betty Boop cartoon was a mercifully short ten minutes. It had been a throwaway gift from Joss when she had Carrie rummage through the closet of their old apartment, and Carrie found herself instantly infatuated by that and some old Shirley Temple VHS tape. Arthur couldn't even remember the last time _any_ of them watched Betty Boop before that or why they would have it in their closet, besides his mother telling him that as a young child he used to request the _"Debby Boo cartoons"_ on Sunday mornings. Now Arthur was the one paying the price for it, at least twice a month.  
  
His fault for making a Cinderella joke, he supposed.  
  
Still. It was a pretty sight, those big blue eyes entranced by the cheap looping animation as she pulled Frankie up to her chin, clearly more content with her surroundings than she probably should be.  
  
 ** _I'm just a poor Cinderella, nobody loves me it seems_**  
 _ **I'm just a poor Cinderella, and I find my romance in dreams**  
_  
The couple upstairs, the resident sexpots, were thankfully not going at it tonight in a way he didn't want to explain to her, but as of recent he'd heard them come to blows that at least once required police interference. His face heated. _Ugh.  
_  
"Carrie, go brush your teeth and get in bed. I'll be in to check on you in a minute."  
  
"But it's a _Friday,"_ she whined, pushing off of him.  
  
 _"Carrie Frances_ \- I _said_ go brush your teeth."  
  
With a huff, she relented, pushing off of him with one hand, keeping the other tightly around her faithful rabbit. Joss said she was getting too old for it, but that was a downhill battle he'd been in with her more than once before. _She likes the pacifier, Joss, why can't she have it? Joss, I think she's still too young to take the bottle away. She doesn't even have all her teeth yet. Does she have to start school **now?** Can't we wait a year?  
_  
 _"Don't_ give me that look, young lady."  
  
He couldn't be as intimidating as Joss, nor did he really want to be, but much as he loved Carrie, she knew how to be _annoying_. It was like her eyes transformed from his shape to Joss' shape. As a baby she looked like a strange marriage of the both of their features and likewise neither of them. Now it was as though she learned how to shapeshift at will.  
  
He lauded his effort to cut back smoking in front of her when she knew how to push his buttons.  
  
"All brushed, Peanut?" he found himself asking, leaning against the bathroom doorway. "Show me your lion teeth, c'mon."  
  
In display, he bared his teeth at her, eliciting the scrunch of her little nose as a frothy mouth shone her smaller teeth at him with a _"Grrr"_ effect. Considerably less annoying. He half-smiled.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Mom forgot to call."  
  
A hum of nervous agreement scratched at Arthur's throat before he could remember not to do that. He avoided Carrie's eye while he placed a record on the small turntable.  
  
"She could still be in the car," he reasoned.  
  
"Too busy with stupid sex with Keith--"  
  
 _ **"Hey."  
**_  
He whirled to face her, noticing that she seemed to have murmured it to Frankie. Auggie nuzzled at her feet, letting out a few disgruntled purrs before contenting himself into a ball in the middle of the bed.  
  
"You are _too young_ to be talking like that, Peanut," he said, resting a hand on his hip. "And besides, she's still your mother."  
  
The disconcerted frown - her _'eh, whatever you say'_ frown - came to surface as she picked away at some fuzz on Frankie's ear. He swiped a hand through his hair and rounded the bed. Not another stupid talk.  
  
He sighed, resting his head on his hand once he was settled next to her.  
  
"You know you're my best girl, right?" he asked softly. "My only girl."  
  
"What about Nana?" she asked, giving him a bemused look.  
  
"Mm, she's my girl, too, but you're my _favorite_ girl. Just don't tell Nana that."  
  
She laughed. It sounded like bells as she sunk into the softest pillow.  
  
"You know why you're my best girl?"  
  
"Because I look like you?"  
  
"Mm ... kind of. But I like all of you. _Especially_ that beautiful blonde hair of yours, and those sky blue eyes that look so much like your mom's --"  
  
"But they're _your_ eyes --"  
  
"But they look so pretty on you because they're so _blue."  
_  
With a soft harrumph, Carrie pulled the rabbit to her chest, nudging a small toe against the sleeping cat.  
  
"Would you love my eyes even if they were green like yours?"  
  
His own eyes rolled, wishing to get to the point.  
  
"I would love your eyes even if they were black like the devil," he concluded. "And I love how your nose is starting to look all pretty like your mom's. You don't want my nose, do you?"  
  
A soft _boop_ of her little button nose made her giggle. She'd contented herself to lie in the pillow and bask in the praise.  
  
He traced a scratched finger along her soft jawline. She would definitely be getting his jaw very soon, once her bone structure started to become a little more prominent. It also looked like she wouldn't be getting Joss' magic cheekbones, either. And then there was the weird amalgamation of his jaw but Joss' chin. It would be awkward for a while, and he would have to console her in ways only he as her dad possessed, but had not the faintest idea about.  
  
"I also _love_ how witty you are," he continued. "And how you can be _so_ dramatic sometimes, like your mom when she was in theatre club when we were younger."  
  
The half-smile curved into a gentle frown. The message wasn't reaching her ears the way he'd hoped.  
  
 _"Peanut,"_ he tried again, running his free hand through his hair. "You know your mom loves you - in her own Jocelyn way. It might do you some good down the road to give her the same time you give me."  
  
"Then why can't she give me more time?"  
  
His head shifted in his hand, busying himself with a distraction to fend off the question.  
  
"She's just a little confused right now. I am, too, just ... different."  
  
"Mom doesn't have sludge brain, though. She can't take medicine to make her less mad all the time."  
  
"Y'know, sometimes my medicine doesn't help either." His free hand rested on her stomach, patting it, unsure of what else to do. "Your mom wouldn't have given you Frankie if she didn't think you deserved him. She loves you as much as you love him."  
  
 ~~ _She just resents me more than she loves you  
_~~  
"Mom says I'm too old for Frankie," she mused, tugging at the long cotton ears. "She says I need to be not selfish and pass him down to the new baby."  
  
"What?"  
  
A dainty hand slapped over her mouth. Her eyes widened, looking impossibly large.  
  
Arthur shifted up to his elbow and stared. Something in his throat ached.  
  
"What new baby?"  
  
"Mom's pregnant again," Carrie confided, pressing the hand back over her mouth. "She says the baby should come by October."  
  
His eyes closed, trying to process and turning up short. The timing seemed so off. January, that meant four months ... but she and Keith had only been dating for -  
  
A harsh, rasping laugh broke free, so violent in nature that he lurched up in the bed. It felt sick and slimy, but so unbelievably _dry_ , as though a fire had been lit from the inside and was licking a clean wound from his stomach to his throat. Suppressing it only made it worse, like a clawed hand trying to fight its way to the surface.  
  
When he laid back down again, he was sweating, too tired to keep fighting it.  
  
"Am I gonna laugh like that when I'm older?" Carrie asked. She'd been acutely watching him, still getting used to the outbursts. Typically he was in a calmer state when Carrie was around and felt less of an urge for it.  
  
"No," he said softly, shaking his head. "It's not genetic."  
  
"Mrs. Gilby taught us in science that everything is genetic." A small hand reached out to trace the shell of his ear. "I got your ears genetically, and your eyebrows and -"  
  
"The laughter being in _my_ head ..." he interrupted, bring the tip of one finger from his temple to hers. "... doesn't mean it's in _yours_. You don't have sludge brain."  
  
"Well sometimes when bad things happen, I start smiling even though I don't want to, and then I can't stop. Is that the same thing?"  
  
He shook his head.  
  
"No, it's not," he affirmed. "That's all your mom."  
  
Carrie nodded, conceding internally that at _least_ smiling when something was uncomfortable was better than her father's laughter. It sounded painful, especially when he coughed like he was going to throw up.  
  
Her eyes closed. She looked particularly deep in thought, focusing on the turn table.  
  
 _Gather round, all you clowns, let me hear you say ..._  
 _Hey, you've got to hide your love away  
_  
"Sometimes ... when I close my eyes," she started slowly, "and I listen to music when I'm in bed ... I feel like we're in Denver."  
  
"That's a good feeling," he admitted, not sure if it was appropriate to tell her he's often felt the same.  
  
"Why can't we go to Denver while they're gone? We could just call and say the phone lines are down here."  
  
He sighed. It was a tantalizing thought.  
  
"It's not our time right now."  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _"If we have a daughter, we **have** to name her Judy."  
_  
 _"That's a little early to be talking about, don't you think?"  
_  
 _Arthur looked at his wife and rubbed the sore spot on his nose, left there after a botched attempt to cut Lavern's claws. Fifteen years old and the stupid cat was still in her prime to kill.  
_  
 _Six months into married life and he was still getting used to the title. They'd married in semi-private the week before Christmas. "Wife" felt somehow more formal than "girlfriend," but clunkier than "husband." Like a dog saying "woof." Not that he'd ever really want a dog. He and Joss liked the independence of their cats.  
_  
 _Wife. **Wife, wife, wife.  
**_  
 _It felt good. She felt good. Nothing good was supposed to happen to people like him.  
_  
 _He looked harder at her. The wife.  
_  
 _The past few days were a little odd. Joss had flown into the apartment in a whirlwind the previous Sunday, only to collapse on the couch in grief because oh **god,** **they said it on the radio at work, Artie, Judy Garland's dead**. Arthur picked up then that in a fit of agitation, Joss' leg would **not stop bouncing.  
**_  
 _Such was the case here, where he watched her hands conceal her horror-struck face (god **damn** , her eyes were gorgeous when they were so big) as the black and white TV displayed the funeral, where Miss Garland's casket was being carried out of the church. It wasn't that far from here. Arthur was sure he saw the beginnings of the crowd on his way to and from work.  
_  
 _"Oh, my god, Artie," she sobbed. Somehow in the twisting of arms, he found himself pressed against the couch, letting an arm drape over his wife's shoulder while she cried against his chest. Her white pharmacy hat folded and fell into his lap. They'd only just gotten home, not yet out of their uniforms. **"She was so young."**  
_  
 _She wasn't that young. His mother's age.  
_  
 _Oh, fuck. That hurt something in him.  
_  
 _"Artie, if we have a daughter, I wanna name her Judy," Joss said again, followed by a pitiful sniffle. She grasped his wrist. "Judy Frances Fleck."  
_  
 _"Honey, you need to calm down -"  
_  
 _ **"Promise** me, Artie."  
_  
Arthur's attention came into focus first on the turn table, still warbling. His senses came to surface one at a time. Paul McCartney's voice hit him next.  
  
 ** _\-- looks as though they're here to stay_**  
 _ **Oh, I believe in yesterday**  
_  
He looked down awkwardly from his face-down position. He hadn't intended to fall asleep, nor did he remember it. Carrie had been rattling on about her last day of school coming up and --  
  
Arthur saw her in the living room, splayed out on the couch but cocooned in his blue afghan quilt.  
  
The little _sneak_.  
  
After getting changed into more loose-fitting pajama bottoms, he was able to wrangle her from the blanket and get her awkwardly into his arms. She really was getting heavier, but he managed. One little hand clutched Frankie tightly. Her head lolled onto his shoulder, transferring her body heat to him as limp fingers tugged at his shirt collar. Long black lashes flitted against his neck.  
  
Arthur could feel the oxytocin surge through him. He was _starved_ of it. When the body was oversupplied with oxytocin (in such instances where Arthur was pulling a small, sleeping child against his chest, and felt it physically swell with contentment) one had no choice but to feel, love, connect, obey.  
  
No choice but to protect.  
  
She was only wearing some underwear and an old thrift store t-shirt. He shifted his hand under her to not expose her legs to the cold air. Arthur didn't know if it really was cold in the apartment or if it was just him, but he didn't want to chance it. Not with her.  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _"Carrie, sweetheart, **please** eat."  
_  
 _Through a foamy, minty mouth, Arthur approached his wife, toothbrush in hand, saying, "She doesn't like blueberries."  
_  
 _He heard a scoff when his back was turned.  
_  
 _"She'd like 'em if **you** fed her."  
_  
 _He spit the toothpaste out in the kitchen sink. The bathroom plumbing was out of order again. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but it wasn't what he preferred for his family. Married life with a baby wasn't the problem. Married life in a run-down apartment in the slums with tricky pipes and barely enough money to feed the most important part of their lives was little better than a nightmare.  
_  
 _"Give her a small jar. She likes the Gerber stuff."  
_  
 _As he rummaged around the cabinet, he saw - with the faintest hint of amusement - the scrunched nose of his seven-month-old daughter, refusing the crushed blueberries. She had smeared them everywhere - the silver tray, her clothes, her hair, Jocelyn's fingers, even somehow the back of the giraffe-patterned high chair. Everywhere but her mouth.  
_  
 _"Arthur, we can't keep giving her jars of mashed food," Jocelyn clipped, too tired to fight him but feeling a heat rise in the high of her face. "She should've started eating solids a **month** ago."  
_  
 _"She likes strawberries," he noted. "Try frozen blueberries. One of her bottom teeth is coming in."  
_  
 _"Well I put her teething rings in the freezer and she just throws them at me. She'll only take them if you give them to her."  
_  
 _Unsure of how to respond, or if it was safe to respond, Arthur stifled a contented "Hmm" in his throat as he readied a rag to clean Carrie's hair.  
_  
 _"That's not nice, Peanut," he murmured, curling the rag so that her hair swirled to the right. "Just the most prettiest baby ever, aren't you?"  
_  
 _"The most aggressive baby ever. Like living with a bulldozer named Carrie." Joss stood up, making a point to scrape the rickety wooden chair across the cracked kitchen floor. Big blue eyes got even bigger when the pile of blueberries in Joss' hand dropped against the tray in defeat. **"You** can feed her."  
_  
 _"Use some constraint in front of the daughter, will ya?"  
_  
Arthur stared at his journal, thinking a million different things. Having it all be a clusterfuck of confusion and screeching crescendos that built to an amalgamation of white noise made him unable to write for a good while.  
  
She could _not_ be pregnant again. She was _never_ so irresponsible to not learn her lesson the first time.  
  
The ambient noise of an old Murray tape - the one with Dr. Sally and Lisa the Snake Wrangler - cleared the air for long enough that he could focus and, for god's sake, _laugh_.  
  
 _What's the best thing to get for a woman who hated being pregnant and hates her baby and hates you for getting her pregnant eight years ago?_  
 _Well her boyfriend got her **pregnant again.** How hilarious is that?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the tape Carrie requested to watch. I found this on VHS in my closet as a child, which is odd to me as I'd never before seen or taken an interest in Betty Boop.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orD7WIDTAvY&t=439s
> 
> The album Arthur puts on in the bedroom is Help! by the Beatles. The songs specifically are 'You've Got to Hide Your Love Away' and 'Yesterday'.
> 
> I thought it would be interesting to see that while Jocelyn clearly has faults as being at best a forgetful mother who tries and at worst could be charged with criminal negligence (more on that later), Arthur is not entirely in the clear and inadvertently set the rift between them by constantly spoiling Carrie as a baby and forcing Jocelyn to be the heavy, no matter that he was well-intentioned in his actions.
> 
> Carrie's middle name being Frances is another nod to Judy Garland, whose birth name was Frances Ethel Gumm. I also just realized in my own obliviousness that it could be interpreted as a nod to Frances Conroy, who plays Penny Fleck. In all honesty, I never put either of those connections together when creating Carrie. I just thought that Carrie Frances had a good flow to it.
> 
> As always, feel free to comment and critique on what you like and don't like. I always appreciate feedback in any form. Ta!


	9. Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** TRIGGER WARNING ***
> 
> Hinted-at abuse in the last and third to last sections of the chapter, as Arthur suspects something is off about his daughter. DO NOT read past Arthur thinking about Arkham while Carrie is in the bathtub if you are sensitive to such topics.

"Carrie, eat some real food, please."  
  
"This is all I could find, Daddy."  
  
Arthur surveyed the meal in question with some incredulity. Carrie, kneeling on the kitchen counter, was laying a slice of cheese on a bed of smeared ketchup and stale white bread. If her face was any indication, she didn't seem to mind it at all as she pushed the small plate into the toaster oven.  
  
"No apples?" he asked, rounding the counter to open the fridge.  
  
"Mom packed me a bag of goldfish crackers, but I ate them this morning."  
  
"That was ... what? Seven hours ago? So what are you making now?"  
  
There were no apples, nor passable leftovers from the past week. When was the last time he went to the store? Mother _fuck--  
_  
"Homemade pizza," she said pleasantly. "I learned it in home ec."  
  
He couldn't deny her ingenuity, but something about it hurt. _Really_ hurt.  
  
Holy hell, how careless _was_ he?  
  
A hand swiped through her hair, stroking a thumb gently over the apex of her bangs.  
  
Carrie recognized the despondence in his eyes. She wasn't quite sure of the word yet, but she'd heard Daddy say it to his social worker the one time he brought her. It was a Done Day.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Daddy should eat something."  
  
"It's not polite to speak with your mouth full, dear," Nana said. Her attention hadn't wavered from the television.  
  
Carrie closed her mouth, letting the pop rocks fizzle and dance on her tongue like a lights show. She'd gotten a few bites into the bread, and intended to save the other half for her father, before deciding it tasted funny and discovering patches of white mold forming at the crust corners. She was at a loss for a while, before remembering Mom also packed her some pop rocks, so she settled on that for her alternative lunch.  
  
Nana made a comment about Carrie needing to eat real food, just like Daddy had said, but neither of them voiced their concerns further.  
  
Daddy hadn't gotten out of bed in a _while_. It was five-thirty now. Sooner or later she would have to take a bath. She didn't want to, but her scalp was getting itchy and oily, and she didn't know how to get the taps correct.  
  
"Can we watch Star Trek, Nana? It comes on at six."  
  
"Maybe later, dear."  
  
"Nana, _please_ \- it's my _favorite_ episode. The one where Spock gets all happy from the flower and kisses that woman."  
  
"Thomas Wayne has a town hall interview at six. He's very important to our town, you know, Carrie."  
  
"I know, Nana."  
  
Lest she forgot. He was all Nana talked about half the time. Out of courtesy, Carrie refrained from rolling her eyes. They'd been watching the same soap opera for three hours now. She wasn't really following what was happening with much investment, but some busty woman was angry at her baby's father and had hit him real hard with a diamond ring.  
  
It wasn't right to hit people, she was taught. On instinct, her finger traced over the faintest scar left from her goose bite years ago.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Looking at Carrie and feeling nothing was probably worse than looking at Carrie eating stale bread for lunch.  
  
He didn't even realize Carrie had walked in until he came to at the meek call of "Daddy?"  
  
He stared, unable to move, unwilling to talk. One arm was stuffed under the pillow, the other curled at his chest. He had been laying on his side, facing the door for some time.  
  
A small hand twisted a loose thread on the sheets as she seemed to be unable to meet his eyes.  
  
"Nana's hogging the television, and your favorite episode of Star Trek is coming on. I wanted to watch it with you."  
  
 _Great. Leave me alone._  
  
He blinked at her.  
  
"Mom gave me two dollars and twenty cents if you wanna take me to the grocery store. I could help you pick some things out."  
  
She assessed him, though her shadow from the hallway light peering in cast him in pseudo-darkness. The whites of his eyes were very large and intimidating.  
  
He rolled over to his left side.  
  
 _Fuck your mother and her handouts._  
  
"Did you remember to take your medicine today?" she asked.  
  
"... Yes."  
  
His voice was distant, bouncing off the walls and well above her head.  
  
"Because I saw you this morning taking -"  
  
 ** _"Yes,_** Carrie."  
  
He felt the weight of the bed behind him shift down, and her hand warmed his arm.  
  
It terrified him how capable he was of breaking each of her little fingers.  
  
"Why are you sad today?"  
  
 _You won't shut up shut up shut up shut **up**_  
  
The hand that fisted the pillow and shoved it over his head alerted her to retreat. It was all practiced restraint that kept him from putting his hand to her face and shoving her so hard she would bust her pretty skull on the floor.  
  
He would break all of his fingers and toes before he gave in to the impulse.  
  
The mattress shifted back to a more even position. He watched her shadow recede.  
  
"I was gonna save you the other homemade pizza slice I made, but the bread was moldy so I threw away what I didn't eat."  
  
\- - - -  
  
Carrie was two spoonfuls deep into her preparation of peanut noodles when she heard footsteps.  
  
"Carrie, off the counter." His voice was still despondent. She understood that meant not good. "Go get your shoes and jacket."  
  
She knew that tone meant business. It was his Done Day voice, as though he was speaking through a mouthful of ash - quick and tight.  
  
By the time she got her shoes and hat, and remembered to take the noodles off the burner, Daddy already had his jacket on and was telling Nana, "Mom, don't eat anything in the kitchen 'til we get back. It's all gone bad."  
  
He took her hand before they walk out the door, but it wasn't nice like it usually was. He grabbed at her like he was irritated, like he was swiping the keys from the counter.  
  
Carrie wouldn't admit to it out loud, but on rare occasions she preferred her mom holding her hand. They were better than Keith's hands - she hated those. Mom's hands were soft from lots of moisturizer, and she only pulled Carrie along when they were running late to meetings or office parties. Sometimes she would squeeze Carrie's hand when they walked into the house, or press her hands to Carrie's face before pressing three good dream kisses to her forehead before bed.  
  
She didn't think that would happen tonight. At least not while Daddy was standing in the elevator with his eyes closed, breathing very funny and his whole hand swallowing hers.  
  
Done Days were bad, but she didn't think she had to tell him that.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Carrie remembered being four.  
  
When Mom and Daddy were still figuring out custody, she got to spend two weeks at a time with him in the old apartment while Mom searched for a new, bigger house for the two of them.  
  
The old apartment was rundown and smelled like cats. When Mom left, she'd privately called it a _"shit hole"_ more times than Carrie could count. The smell lingered long after Lavern, the 22-year-old calico had died, and longer still after Mom made Daddy get rid of the stray kitten he found and intended to keep for Carrie as a new family pet. They named it Moose before sending it to the animal hospital.  
  
In hindsight, that might have been for the best. She wasn't sure how he could've fed all three of them.  
  
She remembered once that the hot water got shut off because Daddy missed the payment on it. _"Mrs. Gale, the landlord, is supposed to pay for our water,"_ he explained one time. _"But she's sneaky about it and our lease said she'd only pay for the first two years."_ She wasn't old enough to understand what that meant, but she couldn't forget watching her father boil pots of water to pour into the bath to clean her.  
  
She also remembered dancing. Lots of dancing. Daddy pulling her in this direction and that to make her laugh, and Dancing Queen winding to a close on the turntable in the corner of the living room. Doing a tango by herself while he laid on the couch on a Done Day a few times after Mom left, until finally he would look at her with something that wasn't numbness and gosh, would he smile so big. Listening to him humming hurriedly to distract her from the winter cold as he carried her around in his warm, _warm_ jacket and swayed her around the new living room with the ease of a baby - _"Just don't tell your mom the heat got shut off, okay? I'll get it back soon. You're okay, Carrie, you're okay. I know your legs are cold, I got you."  
_  
This was a Done Day that no music could resolve, she concluded.  
  
They'd made a short stop to the bank. Twelve dollars seemed like an awful lot for groceries, and her eyes widened when the bank teller - barely visible at Carrie's nose-to-the-counter height - told Daddy the remaining balance in the account was $2990.  
  
She couldn't believe he could manage to look so upset about that, to press his head against the steel grate and breathe through his nose.  
  
"How did you get so much money?" she asked once they were outside.  
  
 _"Carrie -"  
_  
"Is the rest for Colorado?"  
  
 _"Stop_ asking questions."  
  
He grabbed her hand again, pulling her along to the grocery store across the street. It was getting dark out, so the neon pink and blue **FRESH PAVILION** sign hurt her eyes a bit, as did the dauntingly white lights inside. Mom taught her a few weeks ago that they were fluorescent bulbs, used in cheap areas that couldn't afford cleaner LED lights. The grocery stores Mom took her to were more brown-colored and used string bulbs, and there were flowers all around.  
  
She couldn't remember the other differences when Daddy told her to pick out a good bag of carrots, and be quick with it. When she rounded the cart to put them in with the eggs, onions (her nose scrunched at this, earning a hard side-eye), and tomatoes, she hoisted herself to hang onto the edge of the cart, to glide while her father pushed her.  
  
"Carrie, get off the cart."  
  
A brow scrunched, as though to challenge. He'd said her name so many times that day out of annoyance, he may as well have started using it as a swear word.  
  
She leaned forward onto the cart as he continued pushing it.  
  
"If you break the cart, I'm going to have to be the one to pay for it. _Off."_  
  
With some hesitation, she relented, and set both feet on the ground. It was the white knuckles around the cart's handle going even whiter that did it. Her lips pursed.  
  
If she looked like her father when she was happy, she wondered who she looked like when she was angry. Certainly her face was heating up like her mother's always did. In back and forth arguments with both parents, she'd heard many times _"Stop giving me that face, you look like your damned father"_ and _"You look like your mom too much for your own good."_  
  
She wasn't either of them, nor did she believe she really wanted to be, as much as she might love them and look like them by design. Her name wasn't Arthur Fleck or Jocelyn Fleck, or even Judy Fleck for a real reason. She was Carrie Fleck for a reason, even if that reason was an accident. Carrie was Carrie only, untethered from other people by a name that was entirely her own.  
  
She was Carrie. Carrie was hungry.  
  
There was a Kit-Kat bar on display near the register for only $0.20. Tentatively, she reached for it. Mom never allowed her to have chocolate, except on Christmas when she would get a Marathon Bar in her stocking, or after dinner mints. Keith gave her chocolate the last time -  
  
"Put it back, please."  
  
Daddy wasn't even looking at her. His head was slouched to his chest, counting out $9.15 for the cashier woman. How could he do that? He said sometimes that parents had eyes on the backs of their heads, which was why he sometimes slept next to her crib when she was born, before the extra set of eyes came in to make sure she was okay.  
  
She wondered if Mom's other set of eyes were permanently closed.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Nana was still watching the Thomas Wayne man on the TV when they got back. It was still going even when Daddy finished a quick dinner - seasoned white rice and scrambled eggs - and pushed the plate in front of Carrie at their makeshift kitchen table.  
  
The eggs were a little rubbery where he forgot to flip them for a minute. She ate anyway, feeling her stomach gurgling. He sat in the other seat, watching her. Some smoke from his cigarette trailed from his mouth and tickled her nose.  
  
 _"Mr. Wayne, Wade Harrington with NCB Nightly. If you're elected mayor, what is your plan to deal with the garbage strike and appease the union workers?"_  
  
Carrie's attention turned. Mr. Wayne's voice was low and gravelly, almost soothing in nature. The garbage strike had been going on for a month now and was making Gotham really unpleasant to have to walk through every day. It was even starting to come to Mom's neighborhood, when the poor businesses started running out of room in their own neighborhoods.  
  
Fingers on her head. Daddy pulled her attention back to the plate.  
  
Sometimes he looked like a dragon when the smoke trailed out of his nose.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur remembered Arkahm State Hospital. And he fucking _hated_ it.  
  
After so many days of neglecting to wash his hair because he just wanted to get the fuck _out_ of the shower and away from pitying eyes, a nurse and a male orderly had _forced_ his hair clean.  
  
It admittedly felt good after a while, the nurse's smooth hands coarsing through his soaped-up hair and slicking it back with steaming hot water. She didn't mention or react to the scabs on his scalp where some hair had been torn from the roots. She just did her job with a merry-ass tune in her throat. But no, _no_ , he had a wife and a baby at home, due to be earth-side in just three months. One hell of an example he was setting for his child - Joss believed it was a girl. What was he doing in Arkham? How could he be so selfish? _Why the hell are you looking at me that way, you'd think you'd never seen a man starve himself for his family before._  
  
 _"Feeling better, Mr. Fleck?"_  
  
 _"Hmm," he grumbled. They'd given him the good drugs just before._  
  
Carrie in the bath always reminded him of the hospital. The way her eyes seemed to enlarge and enhance her face when her sopping wet hair clung to her neck, slicked back, forced his own decaying, decrepit self-image to the forefront of his brain. Her hair seemed darker, brown like his when it was wet and the bathroom bulbs were so dim.  
  
 _Never, ever think about Carrie in that place, she's the only sane one in the family, she's perfectly perfect.  
_  
 _Perfectly Carrie._  
  
He could see why she wouldn't want to use the doctor-prescribed shampoo. It was sticky and looked like road tar. He rubbed it into her scalp anyway.  
  
"Remember to wash under the water, Carrie," he said, gesturing to the cloth rag on the edge of the tub. It still sounded slurred. Done Days left a lasting effect on his psyche that stretched out for hours. His record for a Done Day was four days. One of his first off-weeks away from Carrie.  
  
"It hurts down there."  
  
His hands stilled. For the first time in hours, Carrie looked up and saw something in her father's eyes that wasn't total numbness. She couldn't pinpoint the exact emotion he conveyed, but innately she saw it wasn't much better than he had been.  
  
"Why?" he asked, starting to shampoo her head again.  
  
"It just does."  
  
"Well wash anyway," he said. "You and I are going to have a talk when you get dressed."  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _The name "Carrie" slipped from his mouth before he really had time to think it over. Neither he nor Joss had ever know any Carries, but something about the name seemed to stick. She looked more like a Carrie they'd never met before than a pre-planned Judy. They couldn't call her the Something for her entire life.  
_  
 _She was Something. The daughter. She made him Something. Something real.  
_  
 _"I still like the name Judy," Joss mused, brushing a finger tenderly down the exposed little back. It was hours later, well into the next morning. Arthur wanted to go to bed, but he couldn't find any willingness to tear himself from the sight of the most amazing woman in Gotham and their newest member.  
_  
 _"I'm sorry, Joss" he murmured. Sorry for what exactly, he wasn't sure. Changing the baby's name last minute. The physical and emotional gymnastics from the entire day. "We can call her by her middle name if you want."  
_  
 _Joss' face displayed some dismay at the idea, giving Arthur some semblance of relief. The baby looked even less like a Frances than she looked like a Judy.  
_  
 _"It's okay, Artie," she smiled sadly. "Maybe the next baby."  
_  
 _Wait, she still wanted **more?** They hadn't talked about that. Their 'whatever happens, happens' attitude with kids receded to this one child in mutual agreement of how strenuous Joss' pregnancy was. How could she want more than one?  
_  
 _"Carrie Judy, maybe?" she cooed, pulling the baby closer.  
_  
 _A high-pitched yelp of dissatisfaction startled both new parents to a more alert state. Arthur's hands were reaching for her before he knew it.  
_  
 _"No?" Joss said, exuding new, joyous, exhausting motherhood. "Carrie Frances it is, then."  
_  
 _"Maybe we should put her in some clothes, besides just a diaper," he suggested, barely audible. He didn't want to frighten her. "I don't want her to get cold."  
_  
 _"Oh, Artie," Joss smiled. "She's gonna have you wrapped around her little finger."  
_  
 _The creature of blood, sweat, music, laughter, and tears. Carrie sounded like wildflowers and the color blue, freedom and originality. Frances sounded of remembrance, of standing at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, twirling a skirt in gavottes and singing just because she **could.**  
_  
 _Arthur was admittedly terrible at the gavotte. He hoped she would grow up to like his style of dancing.  
_  
 _Daring, he reached a hand to press against her stomach. Her skin, moving constantly with the new ability to breathe, was still pink and incredibly warm. Under his forefinger, he felt the pump of her heart going at twice the normal rate.  
_  
 _"I'll always be here to protect you," he murmured. "I'll do whatever it takes."_  
  
For god's sake, Arthur just wanted to _sleep._  
  
"I'm sorry if I made you mad today, Daddy."  
  
She looked so pathetic and so cute, just standing there in her freshly cleaned linen pajamas, clutching her rabbit.  
  
But she was still so loud, even in whisper. It grated against his skin. He took a sharp drag from his cigarette. Ten o'clock to eight in the morning made the living room his territory, and she was the deer invading it in hunting season.  
  
"Carrie ..." he started, trying to be semi-collected. "It's eleven o'clock. _Please_ go to sleep."  
  
"Daddy, I -"  
  
 _"Carrie."_ He was near pleading now, his patience expended. He held her soft face in his hands, careful not to touch the cigarette to her skin. "You're so sweet, okay? I will be in the room in a few minutes to get you to sleep. Just ... _please_ , go lay down."  
  
The slight narrowing of her eyes when she turned away from him wasn't lost on him, nor was her muttering of "It's _your_ room."  
  
\- - - -  
  
Typically, laying in bed next to Carrie until she fell asleep and curled into his chest alleviated the nervousness caused by one of his Done Days.  
  
He stared at her as she lay tucked in, picking at a nail.  
  
"Did you tell your mom it hurts to bathe?" he asked quietly.  
  
"I tried to tell the doctor," she confided. "Mom said that was inappropriate 'cause she wasn't that kind of doctor."  
  
"Of course she did," he muttered. She looked at him. "Do you know why it hurts?"  
  
Her eyes trailed along the bedroom, trying to avoid him.  
  
"It stings," she admitted. "Like I got burned or something."  
  
He closed his eyes, trying to not think about that or anything related to it.  
  
"I _meant_ , do you know what might have caused it to start hurting?"  
  
Her eyes landed on the cobweb in the top right corner. They stayed there for a while. Her bottom lip opened as if to speak, before closing just as quickly.  
  
She shook her head.  
  
"Carrie, you _need_ to be _honest_ with me," Arthur stressed. "I can only help you if you're honest with me. Do you feel safe in that house?"  
  
A timid nod, almost as if she'd trembled at the head and couldn't stop herself. Her eyes were cool.  
  
"Are you absolutely sure? Does Keith make you feel unsafe at all, doing things he shouldn't?"  
  
She shook her head. Her eyes stayed on the cobweb, where a daddy long legs trekked his way down, down, down to their shared dresser.  
  
 _"Carrie -"  
_  
 _"Daddy."  
_  
She looked at him, lips pursed.  
  
"I don't like these kinds of talks," she clipped. "They make me feel weird."  
  
His hand rested on hers, enveloping it but not clenching it, as if to apologize for earlier.  
  
"They're important for me to know how you are when I can't be with you," he said quietly. "You know you're my best girl, right? It's my job to keep you safe."  
  
She nodded slowly, not reassured by his earlier behavior.  
  
"Why did you have a Done Day today?"  
  
 _Because you'd be better off living in a garbage heap than with me_  
  
"Sometimes they just happen."  
  
"They're not genetic, are they?"  
  
He smiled in spite of himself.  
  
"No, they're not."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt like I wasn't doing justice to either how hard it is to raise a child singlehandedly, not having episodes like Arthur's (which I frequently experience in my everyday life). Not a happy chapter, but I felt long overdue for a realistic one.


	10. A Long Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: Carrie vomits in this chapter. Like, A LOT of vomit. Food poisoning from the chapter earlier.
> 
> Also BIG CONTENT WARNING: THE FLASHBACKS IN ITALICS HAVE A SCENE OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. PLEASE SKIP IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED BY PHYSICAL ABUSE OF ANY KIND
> 
> This was a long chapter, y'all. It took me four days to write.

Protection tasted good.  
  
The gun was steel. It was rusty.  
  
It was air light and power and _god fucking help_ Keith if Arthur heard any more.  
  
Arthur stood up and did a soft shoe as his arms rose, feeling weightless and alone and _on fire._  
  
It felt good.  
  
"Hey, what's your name?"  
  
Was Carrie asleep yet? Arthur was shocked to find he didn't care that much.  
  
"Arthur," he replied to himself. He was nobody and everybody, invisible and all-consuming.  
  
"Hey Arthur. You're a really good dancer."  
  
His arms lifted. Brass ballet.  
  
"Yeah. You know who's not?"  
  
 ~~ _Keith  
_~~  
"Him."  
  
 _ **BAM  
**_  
His heart screeched. In a jumble of confusing movements, he was on the ground, slamming a hand against the knob on the TV to crank the volume.  
  
 _ **"DADDY?!"**  
_  
 _"HAPPY?! What was that?! Are you okay?!"  
_  
Fuck, fuck, where was he? Scrambling off the ground.  
  
 _"Huh - ? What?!"  
_  
 ** _"THAT NOISE! DID YOU HEAR THAT NOISE?"  
_**  
A hole in the wallpaper. His fingers trembled. Quick, _quickquickquick--  
_  
 _"I'M WATCHING AN OLD WAR MOVIE!"_ he called out.  
  
 _ **"TURN IT DOWN!"  
**_  
He wandered around, feeling a little lightheaded. Everything sounded hollow.  
  
"God ... _sorry, Mom."_  
  
He ground to an automatic halt at a figure blocking the hallway. Half his height. Pink pajamas. Wide-eyed.  
  
"Carrie, go back to bed, okay? I'm sorry. I'll tuck you back in."  
  
"Daddy, I wet the bed again."  
  
 _Tear-stained_ and wide-eyed. He crouched down just as the smell hit.  
  
"Uh, okay. Okay. We'll take care of it, okay? Did the noise scare you?"  
  
"I don't feel good," she croaked. A hand rested on her stomach, fiddling at a button. "My tummy hurts."  
  
"Uh ..." A hand slicked his hair back. Three in the morning was too early for this. "I think we have some seltzer if that might --"  
  
He heard the vomit before he felt it. Mid-sentence, a hand clasped over her mouth and her eyes snapped shut. Between her fingers escaped some orange and white substance that he only registered had hit him square on the knee only _after_ she doubled over, gasping.  
  
Parents had an innate ability to not react to disgusting situations. They weren't fun, but Arthur could count the number of vomit festivals on two hands that he'd endured in eight years. He was used to it. Joss might not be so forgiving.  
  
He just closed his eyes, hands outstretched as if to say _'Right now?'_  
  
"I'm sorry," she squeaked. Both hands went over her mouth. He watched her wobble for a second, on alert in case she suddenly decided to werewolf on him and drop to the floor in a dead faint.  
  
One foot hobbled in front of the other. She picked up steam for the slightest half second before another acidic orange pile pushed its way through and assaulted the green carpet.  
  
"Okay," he said at last, unsure of who he was reassuring. "Okay. You're okay. I'm not mad, I promise. Carrie, go to the bathroom."  
  
She hobbled down the hall without incident, hiccuping out an _"I'm sorry, Daddy"_ that chipped away at his heart.  
  
 _Don't mistake me for your mom  
_  
\- - - -  
  
One good thing about living in the slums of Gotham was the landlord couldn't voice much complaint with the condition Arthur kept the apartment. If Carrie threw up on the rug or he hung up a painting to conceal a scribbled crayon mess, what of it? There were worse conditions the tenants kept their homes in.  
  
Currently he was more concerned listening to the dry heaving in the bathroom than fully washing the orange stains out of the rug. It was on and off for the coming two hours. Twice he'd walked in to see a curled mess of red and yellow shivering on the ground, only to scramble for the bowl when he dared to approach.  
  
 _Joss, did you know your daughter is sick and wants her mom? How's your vacation going?  
_  
\- - - -  
  
Some way to spend a weekend.  
  
When was the last time Arthur could remember sitting in the wash room with a wet sheet and a basket of pukey kids' clothes at 5:30 in the morning? She had to have been five at most.  
  
Even with the uncovered fluorescent bulbs assaulting his eyes, he managed to nod off sitting on an empty storage crate against the dryer. His elbows rested on his knees, head in hands. The clothes were probably warm, soft. Smelled good, like nice, garbage-free days and a little girl with a cherry scent to her skin.  
  
He wanted to climb in the dryer and fall asleep there. He probably could without being noticed.  
  
The door creaked open. The scrape of wood against smooth concrete. There was a gust of wind. His eyes opened the smallest bit, and then widened.  
  
Sophie. Fuck. _Fuck._  
  
She hoisted a laundry basket onto the boisterous dryer, standing just to the side of him as she loaded her pile into the washer. Not looking at him. Not acknowledging that he was little more than a fleck in her territory. When she sat on another crate, some several feet from him, his eyes wandered to anywhere else that could catch his attention. This early in the morning, her hair was free from the silk that constricted it to sit atop her head. Now it ran free, looking bouncy and soft and curly and _he wanted to run his fingers through it --_  
  
"Your kid sick, too?"  
  
Her voice was thick with sleep, like the smog that clung to their clothes when they stepped outside and made them smell trashy and homeless. They may as well have been.  
  
 _Wanna go sleep in the alley with me, Sophie? I'll make it up to you for missing Sunday._  
  
He nodded, closing his eyes. It was getting more and more difficult to stay in his hunched position, but he didn't want to run the risk of the creepy old man two floors above theirs stealing Carrie's underwear again like the incident last November. Now everyone with kids was mandated to stay in the washroom until their laundry was done.  
  
There was poetic irony written in the fabric of the universe. Judge forced him to move to an apartment where Carrie would have her own room. He did. Now they were in much worse condition, just with more space. When his mom moved in, things were as they had been.  
  
Perverts who hoarded little girls' Spider-Man undies were A-okay in the eyes of the law, as long as Carrie had a room to herself.  
  
 _"Just waitin'_ for the laundry," Sophie said, feigning a smile.  
  
He wondered if he should mention Sunday, or if she remembered at all.  
  
"I miss sleep," he mumbled. When he rubbed his eyes with the side of his hands, his vision spotted. It was dark. He liked it.  
  
"Don't you wish kids felt the same way?" she joked, still groggy. Her head lulled from looking at him to the signs tacked on the wall opposite the stairs.  
  
 **ALL MINORS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A PARENT/GUARDIAN TO THE WASH ROOM  
**  
 **TENANTS MUST STAY IN THE WASH ROOM UNTIL THEIR LAUNDRY IS FINISHED DRYING TO PREVENT STEALING**  
  
"Isn't it great here?" she said, thick and syrupy with sarcasm. He smirked.  
  
"I think Carrie has food poisoning," he mentioned, unsure of how or if to keep the conversation going. He was never really good at it, outside of his practice with a certain eight-year-old. "Ate some moldy bread. So that'll be fun to deal with today."  
  
"Is it serious?"  
  
Sophie's voice sprung up like someone hit the Mom Alarm. He caught himself before he chuckled.  
  
He wished he could've chosen Sophie to be Carrie's mom, but to keep her exactly in her perfect Carrie way.  
  
Didn't God make Eve from Adam's rib? Arthur wasn't as well versed in the Bible as he believed he should be, but thirty five years of Christmas mass with Mom drilled one or two things into his head.  
  
"Just some throwing up," he said. _And dry heaving and a bloody nose and bed wetting and crying for her mom and --_ "Nothing too bad."  
  
\- - - -  
  
Deja vu hit Arthur in waves sometimes, like rapid punches to his stomach, hitting with such fervor that sometimes the laughter had no choice but to claw its way out.  
  
He once pointed out the scene in that alien movie, where the baby alien bursts out of the guy's chest in a screaming, bloody, bone-crunching mess, when he and Carrie watched it. _That's what my laugh feels like,_ he explained, to her blanched astonishment.  
  
There was some unpleasant feeling of deja vu eeking its way to the surface as he pulled Carrie's hair into a tiny ponytail. The first consequence of her impending arrival some nine years earlier was two months of pulling streaks of blonde hair out of his wife's face as she retched and dry heaved the hell out of the little energy she had.  
  
"Carrie, don't --"  
  
Arthur cut himself off with a wheeze he couldn't help but surface. _Christ above,_ it hurt. Not only the phlegmy sting, but the absolute exhaustion that radiated in her eyes when she lifted her cheek from the toilet seat and turned to see him laughing.  
  
"Don't do that," he breathed, fighting through a giggle. "It'll make you more sick."  
  
"How long am I gonna be sick?" she whined, high and cute and painful. Her back pressed against the wall under the window alongside him.  
  
"It's only seven-thirty, Peanut," he consoled. "It shouldn't last longer than a day, though."  
  
"But what if it does?"  
  
No hospital. Not his Carrie.  
  
"I'll take care of you."  
  
Nimble hands wrapped around her trembling frame. She'd changed out of her silky pink pajamas once she'd made a spectacle of them, and spent the past four hours curled on the bathroom floor in an oversized red Cola shirt.  
  
"I'm cold, Daddy," she whimpered.  
  
Those words hurt. They always have. He as her father was the only person in the whole of the universe who impressed the mysterious powers to make her world safe and comfortable in stressful times. Hearing her newborn shivers and whimpers under a hospital UV lamp devastated him, and it took a lot of effort to resist ripping off his jacket and swaddling her (clumsy as he was) so the nurses could weigh her. He could maintain her, turn into a semi-sous chef at the slightest call of _"Daddy, I'm hungry,"_ turn into the monster hunter guarding closet doors, but he couldn't do shit when her problem was not visible to his eye. It made him feel as useless as when she was fidgeting around inside her mother, pushing her organs around this way and that.  
  
"Why don't you go lay down, Peanut?" he suggested, at a loss for a better solution. "I'll run you a hot bath."  
  
She was fidgeting, but not fighting when he picked her up. A foamy, sweaty mouth nuzzled into the clothing of his neck. There was at least one mumble of _"daddy"_ that got lost in his shoulder, and he heard something about ruining his jacket, but that was of little consequence. He wanted sleep. He wanted her to feel better. He ...  
  
He had to give his mom her medication. He needed _his_ medication. _Goddammit.  
_  
He wanted to not be daddy for the shortest while.  
  
\- - - -  
  
By 9 AM, he had gotten the household under some level of containment and order. As his mother was sat in the living room in her chair, content with her soaps and a bowl of cinnamon oats, Arthur sat on a footstool in the bathroom, washing a more fragrant shampoo in Carrie's hair. The girl was solemn and nodding off, her knees hiked up to her chest. The bath was as hot as he felt was safe for her. He didn't know how he managed to get her teeth brushed without it all coming back up frothy and orange, but they did it. A rare victory in the Fleck household.  
  
"Daddy?" she croaked.  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"Do you ever get tired of me and Nana being around?"  
  
He grabbed a plastic container and filled it with water.  
  
 ~~ _Rarely_~~  
  
"Why would you ask something like that? Tilt your head back."  
  
As she did, at least as best she could without threatening to turn the bath into a pumpkin stew, he rinsed the apple-scented suds from her hair.  
  
"I don't think I could love someone so much that I'd give them a bath after they throw up on me," she explained. He smirked.  
  
 _You have no idea, Peanut_  
  
"Just wait til you're a parent and your kid is throwing up on you," he joked. "You'll understand then."  
  
He tried to picture her grown up. A wife, a mother. Her face carved with stress the way his was, but her eyes bright with the instinctual, boundless love of something greater than her own life, something of her own doing. Unconditional and second nature even if they puke on her knees at three in the morning.  
  
He struggled to see it materialize. Something greater than Carrie might be feasible in _her_ eyes, but not his.  
  
"Mom doesn't like it when I throw up," she mentioned. "Like when I was four and had the flu, and she gave me the cherry medicine to get me to stop puking, but it tasted bad so I puked all over the kitchen."  
  
"That happens," he sighed. "I was responsible for all the gross work detail when you were just a little baby. Your mom couldn't stomach it."  
  
She looked up at him, her nose scrunched. It was sometimes _weird_ to see the both of them meshed into one face, perfect as she may be in his biased view.  
  
"It's not worth it," she concluded. "I think Mom agrees."  
  
"She most certainly does _not,"_ he retorted, reaching for the cloth and body wash. "It _is_ worth it. I'll give you a free pass 'cause you're sick, but give your mother some credit, Peanut. She cares, in her own way."  
  
"Then why don't I have any brothers or sisters from you?"  
  
 _Because I'd rather die_  
  
He considered, realizing that might sound a little mean.  
  
"Because I didn't want you to have to share me with anyone else. I didn't wanna share you."  
  
She shrugged. Her eyes fluttered closed as she permitted the rag to skim her back, her shoulder, neck, jaw. It felt warm and nice. It smelled like --  
  
"What happened here?"  
  
Her eyes snapped open. His voice was much closer now, though softer in nature. A finger was on her ear, folding it over like it was paper, exposing the blots of green and yellow that blemished her skin like a hearing aid buried just under her surface. She hadn't seen it herself, but her mother --  
  
"Carrie, why is your ear bruised?"  
  
Her lip twitched, in the very Carrie-ish way it did whenever she considered a lie.  
  
She couldn't lie to her father. He looked so concerned, so loving, so --  
  
"Mom got irritated with me when I threw water at her during my bath," she breathed.  
  
"Irritated with you how?"  
  
She hesitated, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. Her stomach didn't tighten like it had been doing all morning, but it was as though her heart grew heavy and pounded and flitted like an air light hummingbird all at once.  
  
A hand reached out from the water, suddenly sounding so unbearably loud as the drips from her fingertips grew too heavy and hit the bath water, rippling it. The back of her hand found its way to her father's ear, one of her fingers brushing just over the shell of it.  
  
"The back of her hand hit my ear," she said softly, "'cause I was being fidgety about the doctor's shampoo."  
  
"She hit you?"  
  
"Why is there a scar on your ear?"  
  
It was a jagged, bumpy scar that seemed to have returned to normal color with age, just on the inner shell of his right ear. She wondered how she hadn't noticed it before.  
  
"She hit you."  
  
It was no longer a question. A dribble of the bath water cascaded to his neck, which started to burn bright red. She couldn't tell which emotions came to his face as they were so swiftly replaced by new emotions, none of them really positive. She looked at him, her eyes widening in the way she knew would mean less trouble for her later.  
  
"I'm tired, Daddy."  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _It had become second nature to brush his hand over the tiny stomach, separated only by cotton cloth (gosh, he hoped she was warm enough), not moving or reacting or breathing until he felt it rise in a calm intake of sleeping breath.  
_  
 _He smiled to himself, stroking his thumb over the lamb print on her onesie.  
_  
 _"Note to self," the voice rang out, hitting him just as he exited the room. "Or note to **you,** really -- if you insist on giving Carrie these bottles, can you at least be the one to wash them?"  
_  
 _"Hey, just ..." He closed their bedroom door, wincing at the creak that had proved to be a threat to their colicky infant. "I just put her down."  
_  
 _"Arthur --"  
_  
 _"I'm coming, hold **on."**  
_  
 _It was almost funny, how contradicting the cute little tree and pile of presents in the corner of the living room was as opposed to the hostility that had permeated the early morning. Carrie may have wanted to start being held by her mother, and thankfully her hair-pulling phase was short-lived, but her first word at breakfast ("No") accompanied a pile of pear slices ending up on the floor in a clean swipe. No words were exchanged between either Arthur or Joss when he handed over the formula bottle, but somehow they found the ability to read eyes. He wondered if that came with marriage or the baby.  
_  
 ** _Arthur--_**  
 ** _She likes it  
_**  
 _"I don't want her drinking formula all the time." The hand scrubbing soapy hot water through the plastic bottle -- one of many -- was furious in its fervor. "We can't feed her formula her whole life."  
_  
 _"She likes some solid foods," he muttered. "She was okay when you fed her cottage cheese for dinner."  
_  
 _"Because you were breathing down my neck and she likes it when you're around."  
_  
 _In spite of himself, he smiled. At least someone did.  
_  
 _"And you don't?" he joked, taking the slippery bottle from his wife. His hands submerged in the hot water, basking in it. The apartment's pipes had frozen over two weeks before, and they took whatever they could.  
_  
 _"I do," she confided. "Sometimes. But we -- and I do mean to generalize, **you** \-- need to stop giving her so much formula just because she wants it. Even the doctor said so."  
_  
 _"Joss, this is our baby. Can't we spoil her a little?"  
_  
 _ **"Spoiling her isn't giving her five bottles of formula."** He winced, bringing up a weak hand to remind her that the point of contention between them was separated only by a thin wall. "Unless you have the two dollars we need to keep feeding her so expensively, **I'll** be the one to feed her -- as I should've been from the beginning."  
_  
 _He watched the way she wrenched the lid off of the cat food tin, and worried momentarily that she would end up cutting her hand. She had an unhealed scar from years earlier when she dropped a can on her foot without batting an eye. At the extension of her snide comment, his brows furrowed.  
_  
 _"I can't feed my own daughter?" he questioned, putting his attention to the bottle again. There was a chunk of soppy powder that refused to be scraped away so easily. He worried about what that meant. Was Carrie drinking strictly water if it was all clumpy?  
_  
 _"You **know** that's not what I meant," Joss clipped. "I just want to be able to trust that you won't undermine my authority while I'm in school. Do you want me to have to take Carrie with me to classes?"  
_  
 _"How much authority do you need, Joss?" It was his turn to raise his voice, holding his head high in incredulity. Some soapy water sloshed over the sink's edge when his finger knuckles dropped into the mess. "For god's sake, she's seven months old."  
_  
 _"Oh, excuse me," she sneered. "I forgot I'm talking to Arthur Fleck, Father of the Year."  
_  
 _A chuckle of derision forced its way out before he could process it was happening at all. Joss stopped and stared at him, torn between chucking the bowl of cat food at the kitchen window above the sink or wrapping her arms around him from behind, pressing her cheek into his back shoulder (the bruised one, she noted), asking for him to please talk and make things okay. At this point, things should be okay between them. New baby, a budding career, Christmas - they had to be okay.  
_  
 _As of late, he deserved both.  
_  
 _She settled on neither, instead dropping the bowl of food in front of the mewling old tabby near the front door.  
_  
 _"Do you think I'm not nervous, too?" she questioned. "I'm trying my best here, Art. I got baby, work, and **school** to worry about. I know you're trying, but I don't appreciate being treated like I'm some kind of dictator."  
_  
 _A bottle, freshly cleaned with some elbow grease, tossed haphazardly onto the drying rack. He didn't look at her.  
_  
 _"I don't ..." He hesitated, considering. After a sniff, he found some resolve. "I don't want my baby growing up fearing us."  
_  
 _There was a stretch of silence. Cold, biting, wintry silence.  
_  
 _ **"Your** baby?" she balked. **"Our** baby, Artie."  
_  
 _He whirled around, startled momentarily. She was much closer than her voice suggested to him. He rested his hands, sopping wet, on the edge of their wash basin.  
_  
 _"Then **act** like she's your baby, Joss," he said sightly. "You're intent on giving her no affection -"  
_  
 ** _"I WAS NOT GIVEN A MANUAL WHEN I GOT PREGNANT!"  
_**  
 _His eyes snapped shut. A few droplets of hot water from his fingers flung at his unsuspecting wife, who took in a great inhale of breath. They both wanted sleep and cigarettes and food and sex and --  
_  
 _They wanted the baby to not scream at the drop of a hat. Arthur sighed, pushing up to march to the bedroom.  
_  
 _"You see what you did, Joss?" he exclaimed, feeling a rising itch in the back of his throat. "You **fucking loud mouth."  
**_  
 _A puffy, drool-coated hand fisted the shoulder of his cardigan as he both bounced her in one arm and sifted through a drawer.  
_  
 _"Where are you going, Art?"  
_  
 _"My mom's place," he grunted, shoving a tiny, squirming hand through a fuzzy coat sleeve.  
_  
 _"Good job," she laughed derisively, and oh god, how he so hated the sound of it. At least the baby stopped screaming in his ear. The tiny hand pawed at his hair, not pulling it, but caressing it. "Any problem you have, you run off to your mom like a damn baby."  
_  
 _Where was that stupid stroller at? Corner of the living room! He strode toward it.  
_  
 _"You're not taking Carrie with you."  
_  
 _"I'm taking her to someone who knows how to be a mom."  
_  
 _"Oh, you mother **fuck --"  
**_  
 _The hand on his shoulder was the first thing he registered, as if stopping him from taking his hand away from setting Carrie in the stroller. His head barely started to turn before --  
_  
 ** _BAM  
_**  
 _A coalition of sounds assaulted his senses -- the loudest of all being a sharp, high ringing in his right ear -- before he found his bearings on the ground. His left ear hit a concrete wall and god, that was loud. The room spun. His ear felt warm and sloshy. Holy **shit,** that hurt.   
_  
_"God!" he exclaimed. A hand clasped over the side of his face. Something was wet. "Joss, you punched me in the ear ..."  
_  
 _When his vision stopped flashing, his eyes came into real focus on a set of feet and a dirty carpet. Pink toes wriggling as though she'd just woken up to an everyday occurrence.  
_  
 _"Try to take my daughter and I'll do it again."  
_  
 _Carrie. Where was Carrie, why was she screaming? Did he hurt her shoulder when he fell over? God, if he hurt her --  
_  
 _ **His laughter burned.** It irritated the rush of blood both in and out of his ear. It weakened his arms as he attempted to get back to his feet and not lay in a ball curled on the ground.  
_  
 _"God, you're **pathetic."  
**_  
 _One girlish foot shifted closer to the stroller. Vainly, he attempted to grab Joss' ankle -- **d** **on't fucking touch her** \-- but only managed to paw at it, leaving a small victory in the form of a bloody streak down her Achilles heel.  
_  
 _"I'll take Carrie with me to classes today."  
_  
 _The trailing of her feet, accentuated by Carrie's screeching cries, hammered away at his heart. The hand over his ear trembled. He wanted a cigarette. He probably needed a doctor.  
_  
 _No, no doctor. Not enough money. No insurance. Only Carrie had insurance._  
  
 _He wasn't sure how long he was on the floor, but Joss left, neither holding Carrie nor passing him another glance from his helpless position._  
  
Oh, how Arthur could hit something.  
  
Whatever semblance he had of visions of sleep were eradicated. He was too fucking angry.  
  
 _She hit Carrie. **She hit Carrie she hit Carrie she hit Carrie --**_  
  
A finger traced over the inner shell of his ear, looking in the mirror at the knotted bump from eight years before. It hurt then and it still hurt, even mostly healed. Sometimes he could still hear ringing if everything was too peaceful.  
  
Had Keith ever hit Carrie?   
  
Arthur prayed he wouldn't hear about it. He didn't know how much strength he had left to not fly off the handles and end up in prison -- or, worse, the hospital.  
  
 _Think of your mother, your daughter, don't be selfish_  
  
He peered into the bedroom, shrouded in shadows where the window -- even if he pulled the curtain back -- was blocked off from daylight by the neighboring building.  
  
He wanted sunshine for her. A backyard to play in and a front yard for gardening. A room of her own with toys, with a bigger closet and a dresser to herself, a small TV for her new, expensive video game set and --  
  
He wanted a room for himself. A bed that wasn't a couch meant for someone four inches shorter than himself.  
  
She was sleeping, at least. Cocooned in a pile of blankets that she struggled to wriggle out of, but at least she had stopped shivering and whimpering, and thank _god_ she'd stopped throwing up.  
  
"Daddy?" she groaned. He'd pressed his luck too hard.  
  
"Yeah, Peanut?"  
  
"Are you gonna kill Mom?"  
  
Her eyes opened to search his. There was pain. There was fear. He didn't like it.  
  
"Why would I do that, Peanut? Because she hit you?"  
  
A feeble nod.  
  
"Do you want me to?" he joked. Her eyes widened with the shake of her head. A rare moment of tenderness for her strenuous mother.  
  
"I miss her," she whimpered.  
  
"I know, Peanut. Go to sleep, okay?"  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur got his cigarette, and his food, but he was too hyper-focused on his own anger to really appreciate it. Everything felt mechanical all of a sudden, as though his body was wired to take such motions without real or conscious thought.  
  
For lack of a proper place or object to destroy something, Arthur allowed himself a grimace as his hand ruffled Auggie's fur. The cat nuzzled his head into the rough contact, reciprocating it with the flick of his ear or a nip or two at Arthur's hand - "soft jaws," Carrie called it.  
  
 ** _She fucking hit her_**  
  
The pen twirled around in Arthur's hand, too frenzied to write but acknowledging its importance. The ambient noise of his mom's soap operas pleasantly distracted him long enough to fizzle the image away of the blemish on Carrie's skin that shouldn't have been there. Shouldn't have been marked by her mother. Shouldn't have been punishment over some god damn water. Shouldn't --  
  
He remembered two weeks ago. The bruise on her chest when she was in the bath. The frenzied, varied explanations.  
  
One cigarette wasn't enough. He wondered how yellow the wall might be if he was to rip away the plaid wallpaper. It was already tearing in one upper corner.  
  
 ** _Protect. Protect. Protect. Protect, protect, protect, protect, protect, protect protect protect protect protectprotectprotectprotectprotectprotectectectactectactactactackackackattackattackattack Attack. I want to attack. She attacked. I want to attack._**  
 ** _What will happen if I do?  
_**  
\- - - -  
  
 _Arthur adjusted the little bulb on his daughter's hat. The awning attached to her stroller ensured that the snow wouldn't find its way to her, although her eyes had widened in amazement when he first got her out the door and strapped in.  
_  
 _His ear still hurt. It had stopped bleeding, and his mother tried to patch up the cut on the inner shell, but it was still red and raw. He'd have to wear his hair over it for a while to hide it.  
_  
 _Gotham was unusually quiet today. In the park across the street, some kids were engaged in a snowball fight. The jewelry store was frequented more often this time of year by young men who also dreamed of promising their loved ones a life far away from the slums, of children and a wedding and living out the rest of their lives side by side.  
_  
 _Or at least living together until the kid was out of high school.  
_  
 _He didn't know if he could repeat this for another seventeen years.  
_  
 _Carrie, none the wiser to the moral dilemmas that plagued her household, brought her teething giraffe toy to her sore gums. It was chilled to the touch, soothing and soft for a colicky baby. She stared at her father, who tried his best to keep his eyes on her, finding it hard to tear away. When they got to stopped crosswalk, he took the time to take her little canoli-sized foot in his hand. A shriek of laughter as she kicked away brought a smile to his face.  
_  
 ** _I will never let anybody hurt you._**  
 _ ~~ **I'll kill whoever tries**~~  
_  
 _It wasn't late when he returned home, but the drop in temperature ensured that no light entered their little bit of space. Trying to wrangle both a stroller and a bouquet of flowers up the stairs proved fruitless, so at the risk of it being stolen, Arthur abandoned the stroller in favor of attaching his daughter to his hip and bringing both her and the bouquet to their flat first.  
_  
 _The lights were off, but he could see the silhouette of his wife when he opened the door. An array of candles provided just the dramatic flair he expected of her as a gust of warm air from the kerosene heater hit him in the chest. He pressed Carrie closer into his shoulder.  
_  
 _She looked frazzled. Tear-stained. He couldn't say he felt truly bad for her.  
_  
 _Her eyes landed on the flowers.  
_  
 _"I wish you hadn't done that," she murmured.  
_  
 _Daring, he took a step closer. The clunk of his shoes against the creaking hard wood sounded so ominous, like a horror movie he'd seen recently.  
_  
 _"Wasn't that much," he mumbled. "Four dollars. The lady at the counter said they mean good luck in marriage."  
_  
 _Whether it was out of some primal instinct or just shifting the baby to an easier position, when Joss stood up, Arthur moved Carrie further from her line of sight. When Joss stepped closer, letting her fingers touch the white petals, her lip trembled. A flame did a morphing, distorted dance when her eyes welled with tears large enough to capture its reflection.  
_  
 _"I'm sorry," she rasped. "I'm so sorry, Art."  
_  
 _"I know you are," he murmured. "I know."  
_  
 _"How's your ear?"  
_  
 _The hand that incurred the damage brushed a flurry of brown curls out of sight. She gasped. The hand traveled down and rested tenderly on his neck, brushing away many "I'm sorry's" with her soft thumb.  
_  
 _"My mom said I shouldn't even come back here," he said, surprised by the tightness in his voice. "She really didn't want me bringing Carrie back."  
_  
 _"I know," she sniffled. Her hand instinctively rested on their daughter's arm. Something in Arthur's chest tightened. "I understand."  
_  
 _"Next time it happens will be the last time," he said definitively. "We need to do better for Carrie."  
_  
 _"We do. I do."  
_  
 _Her tears were wiped away by a shaking, sweaty palm. Unsure of the next move, she allowed her body to lean forward, resting her head against his shoulder -- the achey one, bruised from work, what a strong, loving husband she had -- as her eyes fluttered closed.  
_  
 _"Carrie stood up by herself at my mom's house," he muttered. Carrie's skin was soft, pure white. Smelled like talcum powder and citrus and fresh winter. "She tried to take a step to my mom but fell over, but she stood up for a few seconds."  
_  
 _"Oh, my baby." Carrie's hair was soft. It was hard to not envy and caress the twelve little blonde hairs on her perfect head. "Oh, Carrie, **Carrie ..."  
**_  
 _A tense silence followed the pitying coo. Not wholly unpleasant, but one borne from no other options. Joss closed her eyes, surrendering as she stroked her husband's arm to semi-warmth with a gentle squeeze and the brush of her thumb.  
_  
 _"Murray Franklin should be on soon," she noted. "You can put Carrie to bed and why don't we ... do whatever we want until then?"_  
  
The sickness had waned by seven in the evening, after a few more disastrous incidents (his poor mother didn't like change to routine, but a bath on Sundays instead of every other day necessitated it when an eight-year-old puked right in her lap). By eight o'clock, having broken her fever, Carrie was curled up in bed, too occupied with her Game & Watch system to articulate feeling sick. In her cross-legged position on the bed was Auggie - the only member of the house to have evaded the acidic carnage. A bowl of cold, clumpy chicken noodle soup lay half-eaten and discarded on the night stand.  
  
He watched her with some hints of relief and subtle disdain. He hated the stupid gaming console. She begged and begged for it for her seventh birthday. He'd scrimped and saved and worked overtime to be able to buy it for her, only for it to turn up in her collection of presents from Joss (and her then-boyfriend Mark, the cheating fucker) when she opened one up at his home before her actual birthday. He'd put a ban on it in the apartment, but relented when she was writhing around and whimpering pathetically in a flu-like mental haze.  
  
Eventually growing bored of it, Carrie set it next to the soup and rolled to her side to face her father.  
  
"Do you have to go to work tomorrow?"  
  
"Yep."  
  
It had been a long time since he actually _wanted_ to go to work. He appreciated the practice and the goofy facade he had to wear, and there was scarcely anything better than entertaining sick kids in the hospital, but it could be over-exerting and his back was still fucked from the week earlier.  
  
Still, it was much easier to deal with than sitting in his apartment, listening to dry heaving every half-hour or so. It gave him someone to talk to who wasn't limited in knowledge of movies and art. Granted, Gary was the only person who willingly spoke to him, and Carrie was turning into quite the conversationalist, but it was a rare weekend where he wanted to be Carnival. To be anybody but Arthur Fleck. At least Carnival was given some respect.  
  
"How's your stomach feeling?" he asked.  
  
"Better. How's your head feeling?"  
  
"Better," he lied.  
  
Maybe it would one day be of benefit to tell Carrie that his anxiety was hereditary, and stayed constantly under the surface of his skin like some perverse, invisible tattoo that he couldn't just scrub away. Tonight wasn't the night for it, though.  
  
When his entire life was contained in four walls, Arthur wasn't sure if he was the one who didn't exist, or if the rest of the world would fall away until he imagined it for himself. Sometimes the only confirmation of his existence was the little girl who pressed her fingers against his eyebrows, against his nose, his lips, as if to mold himself in her imagination. If his purpose in life was to bring joy and laughter and Carrie into the world, it was enough to justify the stress he endured in the meantime.  
  
"Daddy, will Nana come with us if we go to Denver?"  
  
He sighed, attempting to think of an answer as one finger pushed against his eyelid, suddenly bombarded with, "If I have your eyebrows, why is the hair on your eyebrows thicker than mine?"  
  
"One question at a _time,_ Peanut," he stressed, gently intertwining her prying hand in his.  
  
Her chin rested on his shoulder. Had she not been so damned sweet, he would've pushed her away, lest she run the risk of exhausting the last of her stomach contents down his favorite shirt. It had been a long day.  
  
"You got my eyebrow shape," he explained, "but your mom's hair texture that makes your hair all soft and straight."  
  
"That doesn't make sense."  
  
"More genetics," he said, swatting the subject away. "You'll learn about it when you're in middle school."  
  
She nodded slowly, attempting to understand that she couldn't understand it now.  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _There was something about a post-sex embrace that Arthur savored so much more than regular sex.  
_  
 _Joss was always so warm, so cuddly and -- after the baby -- so squishy. Her hands still hadn't gone down to size almost a year later. Arthur marveled at them in the little slivers of light available via their curtained door window. He could pass out from the feel of her fingers tracing every vein on the back of his hand, brushing a nail along his wrist.  
_  
 _Her head was burrowed in the crook of his shoulder, pressing a sloppy kiss to the vein in his neck. A hand was caught up in her hair. It had been for some time.  
_  
 _They'd heard not so much as a whimper from their third party since they settled her down in their room. It was rare and quiet and almost too much. Amidst the sounds that got lost in their weird amalgamation ("Tell me I'm real, tell me I feel good" was among his favorites), silence and cold air was so rare, it was as fresh as rain water.  
_  
 _Joss slid down a little to get comfortable -- as comfortable as they could be crammed on a threadbare couch -- in the way that she knew would make his knee hike up from the pressure. A puff of laughter clung to his skin. She leaned above him slightly, reaching over to the dirty little coffee table for their cigarettes. During her pregnancy he'd promised to quit smoking with her. Four months into baby-life and they wer_ e _poor enough to share a pack, but desperate enough to see it as a necessity in the weekly grocery run.  
_  
 _"I love you, Artie."_  
  
Paint fumes tasted like lead and acid on his tongue.  
  
There was something so enticing about the danger in it -- inhaling a cigarette after cleaning his paint brush off on his tongue. Never mind that the guys saw it as weird, or to quote Hoyt, "we gotta keep things sanitary around here."  
  
It was as close as he could get to the edge for a long while.  
  
He had more than a bone to pick with Jocelyn. He wanted to hit her. Hit her right in the fucking ear.  
  
Pregnant Jocelyn. Pregnant Jocelyn with her raging pregnancy hormones. Pregnant Jocelyn who was richer than him, who could afford a better lawyer than him, who long ago gave him no say in disciplining their daughter because "she needs a swat on the hand or the ass and you're too weak to hand it down to her."  
  
Fuck. She was pregnant and he was defenseless.  
  
"Who's planning on watching the baseball game tonight down at Dante's?" Javier asked, adjusting his bow tie. He was currently Ha Ha's one and only exotic male dancer. "My uncle is friends with one of the camera operators -- paid him twenty bucks to get a long shot of the blonde peanut vendor with the big tits."  
  
A smattering of nicotine-cooled laughter. Arthur dipped his paint brush in the jar. He wished one day to hear "blonde peanut" and have it not be synonymous with little girls. He liked women as much as his coworkers did. Whether women liked him back without being paid was irrelevant.  
  
He wanted friends to hang out with. Friends who weren't eight years old. Maybe he didn't like sports or alcohol, and they didn't like Fred Astaire or Charlie Chaplin or have crippling social defects, but he knew subconsciously that he would not be considered among those invited to Dante's, then or ever. It hurt more than it probably should have.  
  
"Randall, you coming?"  
  
"Can't tonight," he grimaced. "Ex-wife is up my ass about a missing child support check last week."  
  
The paint brush stilled mid-stroke, leaving a dollop to trail down Arthur's chin. A matted brow crinkled.  
  
"What's child support?" he asked once Randall was within earshot. He didn't want to run the risk of sounding dumb.  
  
"What do you mean? Your old broad doesn't pay child support bein' as high and mighty as she is?"  
  
He shook his head, suddenly feeling very dumb.  
  
"Joss and I had the same attorney. Child support still sounded new so we didn't know what it was and didn't wanna bother."  
  
"God _damn,_ Art. I knew you were a little slow, but ..." He paused to slam his locker closed, clearly still agitated at the loss of his favorite evening activity. "Talk to a lawyer about applying for child support. If the old lady makes more money than you, she'll be court-ordered to pay you to help provide for the kid."  
  
Arthur nodded, unsure of the taste it left in his mouth when he turned back to the mirror. It sounded more akin to a babysitter than he would've liked. There was a class disparity between them -- one that neither seemed ready to acknowledge out loud, but that drove Joss out of their home in the first place.  
  
God, he _hated_ talking to her about money.  
  
But if it would help Carrie ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was unsure of how to start this chapter, and had no plans to begin it with Arthur's gun ballet from the movie, but I wanted to establish that the story is now in movie territory, and I though it settled in nicely with the anecdote of when I got food poisoning as a child and woke up at 4:00 to promptly puke on my mother.
> 
> Arthur being so bold with Joss in their married days felt a little ooc while I wrote it, but when you live under stressful conditions for long enough with someone you love, it's easy to grow some backbone in front of them than with people you don't live with. Their back and forth is a very interesting dynamic for me to write. I do NOT see it out of character at all for Arthur to spoil his only child, but I could see him just as well getting the nerve to defend it.
> 
> I use an inflation calculator for this story and looking at the adjustment from 1973 to 2020, $2.00 for a pack of baby formula back then would be about $12.00 now. I concede Joss' point about being more than a little pissed off about Arthur wasting so much formula on overfeeding Carrie so much when they're poor -- not that that ever justifies hitting someone, ever. That part was difficult for me to write.
> 
> I should just go ahead and throw in the link to a series of domestic violence hotlines to call. Regardless of it being a fictional story or not, this is an issue that I take very seriously and want to see people get the help they need, even if I don't know them. If it helps one person, it's worth it.
> 
> https://www.acf.hhs.gov/fysb/programs/family-violence-prevention-services/programs/ndvh


	11. Special Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to go and edit the last chapter to change Arthur's clown name from Jingles to Carnival because a tumblr post I made about Arthur's original clown name being Jingles blew up ksjvksdk
> 
> Just a light-hearted chapter in comparison to the previous two. I wrote this in about a day and am not entirely unhappy with it. It's short but gets the ball rolling.
> 
> Light TW: Arthur has a run-in with the apartment's resident pedophile. His Joker starts showing in that very protective dad-way. Not everything can be nice - this IS Gotham City, after all.

If ever Arthur felt like a relatively normal parent for a fragment of his unusual blend of life, it was when school would let out, and a pretty little blonde would dash at him with an infectious smile in the horde of kids scattering the yard. He was invisible to all except the one who demanded his attention, and he was okay with it. Her legs swept between his when he dipped her down in a swinging hug, ensuring a shriek of laughter. Carrie was probably the only child in Gotham who preferred Arthur's marred face to Carnival's razor-sharp red grin.  
  
"How's my best girl feeling?" he asked, mid-embrace. "How's your stomach?"  
  
"Fine, except I couldn't eat my lunch. It was gross anyway. Fish sticks and instant potatoes. _Bleh."  
_  
He laughed, not wholly unpleasant, but buzzing in his chest.  
  
"So you didn't puke on anybody?"  
  
She shook her head.  
  
"I might have if I ate lunch. I'm hungry now, though."  
  
He took her hand and they began their routine walk back, meandering and weaving around other city residents like it was second nature.  
  
"I'll make you a sandwich before we get to the library, okay? I gotta make sure Nana's settled."  
  
"But the bread --"  
  
"A granola bar, then."  
  
Carrie's attention turned. Across the street, two dirty-looking men were shouting and swinging at each other outside Hert's pharmacy. Whatever they were arguing about was indecipherable, but nobody seemed to be paying much attention, just walking around them, until one leapt at the other. She jumped slightly, hoping neither of them were hurt.  
  
Daddy pulled at her hand, urging her forward. He learned a long time ago to keep his head down and not draw any attention to a fight he had no part of. The worst day somewhere else was still better than the best day in Gotham.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Can I rent a book while we're at the library?"  
  
"Mm, maybe. But I want you to do your homework while we're there, too. Why did your teacher call and tell me about you getting an F in math?"  
  
"Fractions are _hard_ , Daddy."  
  
"Well not turning it in at all doesn't help you."  
  
Arthur jammed the 8 button maybe a little too aggressively to get it unstuck. He grimaced. He couldn't say the apartment was going to the dogs when it wasn't much to look at to begin with. He --  
  
"Hi, Mr. Wilkes!" Carrie exclaimed.  
  
Arthur's attention piqued, not for the better. At the sight of the old man, his mouth formed a stoic straight line, and he pulled Carrie to his other side, out of view of the lobby.  
  
Carrie had mixed feelings about the quiet Mr. Wilkes, but felt it right to say hi for courtesy's sake. He was very strange looking - his teeth were yellow and crooked, and his nose was very sharp, and his hair was greying and looked like he didn't have a brush to calm it down. But he gave her twenty-five cents one time for the soda machine in the lobby before it got broken. She was told he had something to do with her and the other girl residents' underwear disappearing back in November, but didn't entirely understand why he couldn't get his own Spider-Man underwear. Daddy threw them out when they got them back, with the promise of _"We'll get you new ones,"_ but she was yet to receive.  
  
Arthur jammed the 8 button faster, using himself as a blockade for the elevator door until finally it started to close. His eyes didn't leave Mr. Wilkes, and he hoped to God, with his inborn power of discomfort, that the old man knew not to step closer, lest Arthur lose control.  
  
"Why don't people like Mr. Wilkes?" Carrie asked, curiously observing the way her father's entire body seemed to stiffen, like a cat who ruffled its fur at the first sign of danger.  
  
After a lengthy silence, he said, "Carrie, I don't want you talking to him."  
  
"What if _he_ talks to _me?"  
_  
 ~~ _I have a daughter and I have a gun  
_~~  
A smirk of grim realization cracked the corner of Arthur's tight mouth.  
  
"You come straight to tell me," he said. It was low, gravelly. _Hot_ with anger.  
  
When they emerged from the apartment, granola bar and old library card in hand (Arthur found it in the furthermost corner of the junk drawer, having not expended its use for well over three years), he grabbed her free hand again and pursued the elevator.  
  
Turning a corner, three heartbeats spiked when the aforementioned underwear thief came chest-to-chest with Arthur in a direct collision that produced at least one yelp of surprise and sent Carrie sprawling to the ground on the bounce-back from her father.  
  
"Is she okay? Hey, I'm sorry, man."  
  
In that primal way that was only recognizable and understood to those in the domain of relatively new fatherhood, Arthur snarled something that sounded like _"fuck off"_ and retracted his shoulders to make his body seem much larger than it really was. Predators didn't need to know he could be blown away at the slightest gust of wind. They would be kept unaware until that last second that he had a gun in his jacket and an itchy trigger if the wrong person stepped too close to the girl.  
  
He collected Carrie from the ground in a quicker, more aggressive fashion than he might otherwise take. He was practically dragging her to the elevator, amidst the whine of _"Daddy, slow down."  
_  
Briefly wondered if he would run into people like that should they be in Denver.  
  
"Hey, is your kid alright?" called the voice behind them, picking up speed. He mashed the elevator button pointing down. "She hit her head pretty hard --"  
  
"She's _fine_ , thank you."  
  
Carrie wasn't really fine, and indicated as such to him by rubbing at a sore spot where her head hit the concrete. It wasn't hard, but hitting anything on concrete unprompted wasn't a nice experience.  
  
They stepped in the elevator, where again he sidelined her out of the strange man's view as he pushed the lobby button one, two, three, four times. He leaned against the opposite wall, looking much more tired than when he picked her up from school.  
  
"Stupid cunt," he grumbled.  
  
Carrie's head snapped at the swear, her eyes widening. A childish blush tinted her cheeks. Usually he was able to control the angry inflections in his vocabulary - at least better than Mom was.  
  
 _"What did you say?"_  
  
Carrie's heartbreak spiked again. The man sounded less concerned now. His voice was tight with irritation and authority. Watching him take a step toward the elevator made her take a step back on instinct.  
  
"I said _'thanks a lot,'"_ he drawled, the sound meshing with the mechanical whir of the elevator doors closing.  
  
 _Thanks for making me spend Thanksgiving without my daughter because my ex-wife heard you were a fucking perv for kid scent  
_  
 ~~ _I could kill you right here if I wanted  
_~~  
\- - - -  
  
"Why did you call him that word?"  
  
He winced, not too pleased about losing some of his temper in front of her. With his luck, the slight was sure to be repeated in front of Joss, who was not entirely undeserving of it, but that would come back to bite him later.  
  
"Carrie, we're in a library. Drop it, okay?"  
  
Her hand slipped out of his. A quarter was being twirled and warmed in her other palm, itching to be spent. With a last glance, she skipped off to find the kids' section.  
  
Arthur had been to this library before, a little over a year ago. It was a small late-night gig - a magic act involving handkerchiefs and a hand puppet, and teaching preschoolers how to sing Mary Had a Little Lamb. He took the job to pay for Carrie's gaming console, but also because nobody else would take it. He enjoyed himself. The kids loved him.  
  
Sometimes he wanted to ask Hoyt why he employed clowns who hated being clowns and docked his hours in the meantime.  
  
 _Child care, child labor laws, child obesity, **child support**_  
  
The book, when he pulled it from the shelf, was splotched with grey stains on the back cover. Its front cover was barely hanging on by the few threads it had left, binding it to the spine.  
  
Arthur heard once that the divorce rate in Gotham was 80% higher than in any city surrounding them, the teen pregnancy rate among the top 20 in the country. He believed this might be the most popular book in the library.  
  
Would Joss have stuck around if they'd all gone to Denver together?  
  
He found an empty table close to the kids' section, sitting so he could see Carrie just out of his peripheral. She was crouched on the step of a cabin fort -- bearing the title **KID HAVEN** in blocky white letters -- with a book perched in her lap and what looked to be a Dr. Pepper in her hand. That would be fun to deal with later. Inwardly he regretted giving her the quarter.  
  
From his jacket, he pulled out his age-worn journal. Having forgotten his pen, he was grateful the library had a collection of pencils in a cute little basket in the middle of each table. Carefully, he copied word for word from the old book:  
  
 ** _CHILD SUPPORT - court-ordered payments, typically made by a ~~noncustodee~~ noncustodial divorced parent, to support one's minor child  
_**  
 _ **THINGS TO DO:**_  
 _ **1 - call Jocelyn, try not to yell about Carrie**_  
 _ **2 - ask Hoyt about more shifts to pay for attornee**_  
 _ **3 - go talk to attornee  
**_  
Carrie came to join him after some indecipherable amount of time. He didn't believe it'd been that long, but when he looked up at her, he ground his palm into his eyes, feeling suddenly tired. The red backpack was zipped open and closed after a torn blue folder, stockpiled with bent and crumpled papers, was tossed onto the table.  
  
Instinctively, his hand reached for the soda can, drawing it out of her reach.  
  
"You get this back when you finish your math homework," he said quietly. It was important to keep some semblance of the stern parent Jocelyn so frequently chided him for forgetting. "If your mom finds out about you failing math, she'll kill me."  
  
The can was already half-empty. Carrie fixed him with an exasperated, if not somewhat amused half-lidded smirk.  
  
"I do my homework," Carrie retorted, pulling a creased, half-finished page from her folder.  
  
"You don't turn it in 'cause you know it's all wrong," he ribbed. "Now get going with it."  
  
A few minutes of pencil scratching from both parties ensued. Arthur alternated between copying snippets from the book and looking over at Carrie, ensuring something productive was being done. When he noticed her hand edging toward the bottom corner of the paper, shading in a flower, he tapped on an inked-in, unanswered problem. It hurt his finger and he grimaced inwardly at the abrasiveness.  
  
"Did you hear that Murray Franklin said he was inviting Elton John onto the next show to talk about his new album?" she asked suddenly.  
  
 _"Carrie,"_ he stressed. "Focus."  
  
He had heard. He loved Elton John, and was giddy about such a union. All the better on a Carrie night. But it might be inappropriate to indulge when her litany of unfinished assignments lay between them. Her mouth did that lopsided pout that reminded him so much of himself, it always sent a flutter through his stomach.  
  
The pencil in her hand was tossed into the supplied basket.  
  
"I can't focus when my eyes get all wobbly," she complained, perhaps a little louder than she should've been. Arthur's eyes shifted to the reference desk, where a young woman with pink horn-rimmed glasses that predated her glared at them. "Look at this."  
  
When Carrie widened her eyes enough, she could manipulate the irises to shake for a small amount of time. It gave her a headache, but it never failed to make her father laugh at how ridiculous she looked.  
  
While he didn't laugh, he allowed her the softest lopsided grin.  
  
"You're funny."  
  
\- - - -  
  
Gotham was beautiful at night. Carrie so rarely saw it in all its grimy glory when she was confined to four walls. Walking to the subway, the buildings skirting uptown Gotham made her feel small, but all the lights looked as though the stars had been organized in her stylized vision.  
  
It was also especially dangerous at night. Maybe that was why she liked it. There was excitement in it.  
  
Daddy told her to get dressed in nice clothes -- "But not too nice" -- because he had a special evening planned for them. Even if it was just the subway, where she had to sit in his lap away from the drunk homeless man across from them, and occupied herself with reading the blotches of writing on the walls, she was content to it.  
  
She was just reading a spot that said **JACK LOVE & THE HAMPTONS** \-- Daddy told her it was important for her to find stuff to read everywhere, so she wouldn't get sludge brain like him -- when the subway receded to another stop, hissing familiarly like a dog's petulant whine.  
  
Putting his hands on her bony rib-cage, he set her feet on the ground and stood up. As he anxiously pulled her out of the train at their stop, he said softly, "I need to feed you."  
  
There was a two-hour lull between the library and their next outing where they rested in the apartment so he could check on his mom once more, and in that time Arthur had been too preoccupied to make a quick dinner. The outline of her ribs, like a malnourished dog, made him feel guilty. Thinking about Carrie growing to be as underweight as he was, her skin paper-like and covered in welts and clinging to underdeveloped, brittle bones, almost brought up a mixture of stinging bile and laughter.  
  
Pogo's had a menu, he remembered. Nothing great or healthy, and he'd never eaten there before for himself, but he couldn't find time to care when in 36 hours, all she'd had was half a bowl of cold soup and a granola bar.  
  
It was rare, but sometimes a dull ache settled in his stomach, reminding him that he was doing just a bang-up job at this parenting thing.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The building Carrie knew to be Pogo's was dense with a haze of cigarette smoke -- at least in the area Daddy parked them in. It wasn't wholly unpleasant (Mom and Keith smoked a lot, and sometimes it smelled funnier than nicotine), but it tickled her nose and made her cough until Daddy swatted the smoke away from her.  
  
At the table were a glass of water, Daddy's journal, and an interesting orange-shaded lamp. Setting herself on her knees (the red velvet upholstery was very comfortable), Carrie inspected the names written on it. There were many of them, in every sprawling and dainty nature. She wondered who all these people were who were all so different, but all attracted to the same place -- to the same table.  
  
She wondered if she was sitting in the same place as some of the greats Daddy talked about watching on TV.  
  
Age-worn and already scribbled over, Carrie was able to make out her father's signature. Sneaking the pen from beside him, just under his own name, she carefully traced a dainty but still shaky **CARRIE FLECK** on the lampshade.  
  
A new person joined their table, still standing. Carrie's eyes traveled up to a hefty woman, her skin dark and her hair poofy. In her hand was a small notepad. On the tag of her blouse was the name _CARMEN_ in a fancy font Carrie was inwardly proud to have deciphered.  
  
"You brought a date with you, Arthur?"  
  
Arthur's attention turned, having been enraptured by the warm up comedians before the actual show. Sheepishly he laughed.  
  
"Just my daughter," he said quietly.  
  
"Daddy, I think she meant it as a joke."  
  
Having understood, he nodded nonetheless, smiling as a soft "Oh" of pretend realization came to him.  
  
"I'll get you a glass of water then," Danielle said. "You looked over the menu yet, baby?"  
  
Carrie nodded confidently.  
  
"Can I get mozzarella sticks, please?" she asked, remembering the manners Daddy had told her to use for the waitresses. "Oh, and an Orange Fanta."  
  
"No, Carrie, no more soda," Daddy cut in. "You've had enough of it today. She'll have water, thanks."  
  
 _"Carrie,"_ the woman repeated, looking as though she was testing it out on the tongue. "My mom's name was Carrie. That's a good name, Mr. Fleck."  
  
The present Carrie smiled up at her, pleased to see it reciprocated. She had no idea her father was also smiling, nor that they looked like the strangest pair of twins that the woman had ever seen. A lot of people in Gotham could use a lesson in kindness, Daddy often said.  
  
"I'll tell you what, Miss Carrie," Carmen continued. "I will go get your mozzarella sticks, and I will throw in an orange juice, on me."  
  
When the woman turned away, Carrie turned to her father.  
  
"Why would she throw the orange juice on her?" she asked quietly.  
  
"She didn't mean it literally, Peanut."  
  
"Oh," she nodded, feigning understanding.  
  
From the swinging door a few tables behind them, a burly man's voice could be heard asking incredulously, _"Who the fuck orders orange juice at nine-thirty at night?"  
_  
Arthur turned to Carrie, both of them fixing the other with a stare only they were capable of, that only they seemed to understand. A moment later, their table of two burst out laughing, unabashed, totally welcome.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Who the hell thought to call someone at 1 AM?  
  
More to the point, Arthur wondered, who the hell would be calling _him_ at 1 AM?  
  
He felt freshly clean and semi-satisfied, alone at the table with just the cigarette bouncing limply between his lips, and his Playboy magazine cutouts out of sight of inquisitive blue eyes that liked to meander out past bedtime.  
  
"Yeah?" he asked into the receiver, running his clean hand over his eyes. It was late and he should've ideally gone to bed after he'd put Carrie down.  
  
 _"Arthur? Fuck, I am so, **so** sorry."  
_  
His brows crinkled. A soft heat simmered away the flush that had earlier grown on his face.  
  
"Jocelyn?"  
  
 _"The time just got away from me and ... there was so much to do here, I didn't have time to get to a phone. I'm --"  
_  
"Why are you calling at one in the morning? You know it's a school night, don't you?"  
  
 _"I know ... I know. I tried to call earlier today but your mom said you were out."  
_  
"Yeah, we were. Took her to the library and a comedy show."  
  
 _"Oh."_ There was a beat of silence. Arthur was wondering if he should hang up before -- _"Did she enjoy it?"  
_  
"Joss, get to the point, please," he groaned, running the clean hand over his face. "I'm tired."  
  
 _"I just wanna know how Carrie's doing. I know, I'm a fuck-up mom."_  
  
Feeling a little bold, Arthur couldn't help himself.  
  
"You've had three days to call and see how Carrie's doing. Call tomorrow."  
  
He hoped it hurt when the dial buzzed in her ear. It made him nervous how much he wished for it to hurt.


	12. Dinner and a Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: the chapter begins with a flashback to Arhkam State Hospital
> 
> There is a semi-explicit sex scene that takes place after Carrie is put to bed
> 
> TW: Arthur throws up AFTER he goes home post-meeting with Rose.
> 
> This might be the most Arthur-like chapter I've written, and I'm more than a little proud for capturing his domestic sweetness and his maniacal side coming through. Arthur being an asshole to a pregnant woman seems quite out of character, had she not rounded on Carrie. Not that that excuses his boorishness in any way.

_"Artie, what happened to your head?"  
_  
 _ **Glass. Glass and wire and slam, slam, slamming away. God, let it kill me. Kill me kill me kill me --**  
_  
 _"It's nothing," he muttered. "Nothing."  
_  
 _His eyelids felt too heavy, and his wife was too pretty.  
_  
 _ **Oh my god, you're beautiful and you deserve better. That's why I'm here.**  
_  
 _Out of view of the orderlies, a soft hand took his arm. It was warm. It was human.  
_  
 _"Your hair looks nice," she said quietly. He could hear the smile in it, sad as it was.  
_  
 _He didn't want to tell her that it was a nurse who washed his hair, a pretty brunette who crept into his dream and made a mess of his pants when he went to bed that night.  
_  
 _"My mom threw me a baby shower on Friday. Your mom was there. She got the **cutest** Mickey Mouse onesie for the baby, and knitted this beautiful green afghan quilt."  
_  
 _Arthur nodded, thinking of his mom.  
_  
 ** _The baby will be beautiful, Happy. Oh, a grandchild, finally. I hope they get your eyes. All the baby needs is love.  
_**  
 _ **Happy, what have you done? You have a baby to think of. Don't worry about money. All the baby needs is love.**  
_  
 _Love. Hmm. Love and food and clothes and diapers and blankets and toys and --  
_  
 _All the baby needs is a father who's not him.  
_  
 _"Art, **please say something."**  
_  
 _A nail brushed against a blotch of tan skin on his arm. Not really a tan, he remembered, but a cigarette burn.  
_  
 _He **really** wanted a cigarette. Even more than than the Pentobarbital. He hoped he could get a dosage when he got out. And a new pack of smokes.  
_  
 _"Do you have a name for a boy yet?" he managed, not realizing until then how dry his throat was.  
_  
 _"I do, but I'm not married to it. I still think it's a girl."  
_  
 _A girl. He nodded, not letting it settle.  
_  
 _Joss groaned, retracting her hand to rest on her red-patterned stomach. It wasn't big enough to look properly pregnant, but fat like a swollen cow tongue. A droplet of blood in a bleached world.  
_  
 _"She's kicking like crazy all of a sudden," Joss sighed.  
_  
 _Arthur's head turned curiously, the strongest movement he's managed since Joss arrived. Slowly he blinked.  
_  
 _Joss bit her lip, wondering.  
_  
 _"I think she knows her daddy's voice," she smiled. "Y'know, she moves sometimes when I'm laying in bed talking to her, but she kicks away when she hears your voice. I think it excites her 'cause it's not mine, since I talk to her all the time."  
_  
 _He nodded numbly, observing the movements of the oddly-shaped stomach. It bounced like a heartbeat. A knot of sympathy formed in his stomach. He crookedly smiled through it.  
_  
 _"What name do you have for a boy?" he dared to ask, so small and intimate that he wasn't even sure Joss heard him.  
_  
 _"Christopher Howard Fleck," she winced. She swatted at her stomach. "Calm **down** in there, Judy, **damn."**  
_  
 _"Christopher," he repeated slowly. It felt ... green and blue. It felt good. "Christopher Howard ..."  
_  
 _No face materialized in his mind. Nothing in his drug-addled imagination could morph a face that excited him in his image of his wife. Boy or girl, all he could see was a pair of baby shoes -- white, puffy, laces thin and looped.  
_  
 ** _Judy Frances Fleck. Christopher Howard Fleck. Fleck. Fleck. Hey, that's my name.  
_**  
 _His hands moved through the small gap of air between them and stayed there, suddenly afraid.  
_  
 _Joss grabbed his wrist again and gently wrenched one hand forward, forbidding reluctance.  
_  
 _Her stomach was still soft and squishy. At last coherent, he wondered how much of it was food and how much of it was baby.  
_  
 _Something shifted under his hand. Hard-pressed into his palm, something rippled from his wrist to the tip of his pointer finger, forcing a current of life and emotion right through his heart and down his spine. Joss laughed, surveying him as his eyes sparked to life.  
_  
 _His pointer finger retracted and tapped right back on the movement. It reciprocated.  
_  
 _"She's doing flips in there," Joss said. "I think she likes you."  
_  
 _"A- **hah,"** he laughed, unsure of what else to do. A giggle, uncontained and high in rich euphoria, filled the air between them like they were naughty school children.  
_  
 _"Okay, that's enough of that."  
_  
 _A voice, new. Loud and echoed and entirely unwelcome in their little bubble. Some man in a white uniform, bigger and stronger than Arthur but **he** didn't have a wife and baby.  
_  
 _ **Get away from my wife.**  
_  
 _"You'll have time for that when he's outside, ma'am, but in here, he's --"  
_  
 _ **"ARTHUR!"**  
_  
 _Blood tasted good. A collection of deafening sounds -- screaming, screaming, banging, a growl, his growl -- followed suit when he lurched forward at the man's free arm. A dog and his bone, that's all it was. He wanted the other arm, wanted to rip it right the fuck out of its socket and beat the man round the head with it, **do not ever touch my pregnant wife, do not ever --**  
_  
 _His head fell on the table in a sweating heap, a smile of primal satisfaction buried under a slurry of blood that threatened to blemish their precious white room. He had not the faintest idea that his wife didn't appreciate the effort to protect -- that she stood in the parking lot for several minutes, resting her head on the hood of the old station wagon, suffocating in wailing tears.  
_  
 _A hand caressed the swell of her stomach fervently.  
_  
Out of his peripheral, Arthur alternated between watching the old slapstick on the TV and watching Carrie hard at work on her missing assignments. Two out of four papers wasn't bad.  
  
"Are you mad at mom?" she asked suddenly. Her eyes didn't leave the paper. It sounded almost curious.  
  
"What do you mean, Peanut?"  
  
As long as she put pencil to paper, she could talk his ear off. He watched carefully.  
  
"When Mom called me, she said she tried to talk to you, but you sounded mad at her."  
  
 _ ~~Not mad enough~~_  
  
"I was just tired," he brushed away. "I'll call her tomorrow. Did she say anything interesting?"  
  
"Not really. Just that she and Keith's mom went dress shopping and then they all went to a fancy steakhouse. She said the baby's been making her tired."  
  
Arthur nodded, feeling hollow.  
  
 _I didn't have time to get to a phone  
_  
 _"I'll squeeze the cider outta yer adam's apple."_  
  
Both heads instinctively turned to the TV. A simultaneous wince and giggle erupted as Carrie watched Moe squeeze Curly's head in a letter press, accentuated by a comical bone crunching noise. Her hands clasped over her head, feeling the pressing ache. Arthur's right ear stung in sympathy pain. It did that sometimes, regardless of him being in on the joke or not. He knew it was a rubber press. It still hurt.  
  
"I shouldn't let you watch TV during homework," he muttered.  
  
"I like it, Daddy."  
  
Leaning forward, he fixed her with raised brows in an amused glower.  
  
"Oh yeah? What if you finally get tired of me one day and stick my head in a letter press? You're already getting to be stronger than me."  
  
"We don't have a letter press, Daddy."  
  
The smile she radiated for him assured him that she wouldn't dare think of such a thing. Something similar to contentment -- the artificial sweetener Arthur likened to unobtainable happiness -- got caught in his throat. He smiled back at her, the pain in his ear dwindling.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Did you always have that scar on your ear?"  
  
"Well aren't you just a Nosy Nancy."  
  
She wrinkled her nose in distaste, both at the slight and at her father slapping a handful of cold, mucky shampoo on her warm head. He half-smiled. Having heard a million times before the story of her last-minute name, she was insulted to be called anything else outside of a stage venue. It was an insult as though she wasn't worthy of being the Carrie she was born to be.  
  
At least it deflected from the question at hand.  
  
"That's not my name."  
  
"You're a Curious Carrie then."  
  
A gentle smile rested on her lips as she allowed her head to be massaged. The icky substance turned sudsy at odds with the warm bath water.  
  
"Mom and I watched this movie a few weeks ago ..." she mentioned, "... where some mean kids were calling this girl Creepy Carrie, and she killed them all at prom with her mind control powers, 'cause they dropped a bucket of blood on her."  
  
"Mm, was _her_ mom crazy, too?"  
  
"Mm-hmm."  
  
He'd seen it by himself when it came to theaters. He found it difficult to concentrate on the story when a pair of fresh tits swayed in slow motion on the screen, but equally as hard to maintain any arousal at the continuous use of his then three-year-old daughter's name. _Creepy Carrie, Creepy Carrie_. He hadn't seen it since. No self-respecting cable network would air such a dirty movie.  
  
"Did you and Mom go to prom together?"  
  
"Your mom and I didn't meet 'til college, Peanut."  
  
"Why did Mom graduate and you didn't?"  
  
 _ **She was impatient to get married  
**_  
"We could only afford for one of us to go, and I told her she should be the one to go."  
  
"Oh," she said quietly. He caught a few suds before they fell over onto her forehead. "Well did you go to prom when you were in high school?"  
  
"Couldn't afford it."  
  
He could afford it, alright, but not the embarrassment. _"Ru ... Rudy, will you go to -- daHAHAHAHA ... I'm sorry ... will you --" A piece of spittle and a burp of laughter, right on Rudy Paulson. He was shocked he didn't throw up. For the rest of the year, **did you hear Arthur Fleck got rejected by Rudy Paulson? Don't flip your wig, Art, I'm sorry, but you're just not in the groove like I am. Maybe work on that laugh and ask someone in your circle next year.  
**_  
 _He heard her dress looked ugly anyway, like a shingled roof. He didn't even bother trying the next year.  
_  
"I want a pretty blue dress when I go to prom," Carrie said, fortunately taking him away from himself. "I want that blue towel as my prom dress."  
  
Confused, he turned to her dripping, pointing finger. His mom's steel blue bath towel hung on the rack -- the only one in sight, besides Carrie's parchment yellow one on the toilet lid. A puff of laughter escaped him.  
  
"Why do you wanna smell like Nana when you go to your high school prom?"  
  
His mom smelled like dated perfumes and mothballs. Not the most appealing smells for a teenage girl.  
  
"Fashion statement," she said matter-of-factly.  
  
"Oh," he nodded. "Well I'll remember that when you turn sixteen."  
  
He didn't know which was worse to imagine: Carrie, gawky as she will be by force of circumstance from her last name and awkward dimensions, going to prom by herself, or Carrie being accompanied by a Gotham boy. Arthur was a Gotham boy once. He heard them prowling the streets during his daily assignments around the city. He heard that boys were supposed to mature with age, but it seems every generation was getting to be worse than the last. To think of Carrie in the same vicinity as a boy from Gotham -- as one of the little bastards who knocked the hell out of him the week before --  
  
Carrie slowed the movement of the soapy rag on her stomach, watching her father erupt in a fit of unenviable laughter.  
  
"Just -- just keep, _gaha -- **god ..."  
**_  
It was unfortunate that she was still too young to know not to stare at the less fortunate. If he had to wager a guess, Joss probably didn't help teach her, so he was running blind. He'd only just gotten her to not look at Gary in a way he deemed rude. He was stuck at the crossroad of teaching her manners and having to answer every question of his condition ad nauseam.  
  
 _No, I don't know why it happens. It just does. Yes, it hurts. No, you won't get the laugh, unless you bonk your head really hard. No, don't hit your head to see if it works. No, it's not funny. No, I laughed when you were born because you looked like a peanut.Yes, it's hurtful when people stare, which is why you shouldn't do it. Carrie Frances, get away from your nana's porcelain collection.  
_  
The plastic container was as heavy as a brick in his wrist. It always slacked when he put it to immediate use after a laughing episode. Still, he had to wash out her hair.  
  
Thankfully she didn't ask questions tonight. His lungs hurt too much to struggle any more with her about it.  
  
With a phlegmy intake of breath, one which made Carrie flinch to hear, he asked, "How's your ear feeling?"  
  
He swiped a few suds away with the pad of his thumb. Some splotches of green had faded into a jaundice-like yellow, which he knew meant it was healing. It shouldn't have been there regardless. He hummed in disapproval.  
  
"Are you gonna talk to Mom about it?" she asked, dutifully tilting her head back.  
  
"I probably will," he answered. It felt raspy and sick. A bead of sweat trickled on his temple. "She's taking me to dinner on Thursday."  
  
"You're going out to _Albany?"  
_  
He smirked. "No, right here in the city. She said she misses you and wants to come out for a few days, then she's going back."  
  
Her nose scrunched again, eyes narrowing.  
  
"You're going out to dinner with her like a date?" she questioned. Arthur's heart spiked.  
  
"No, Peanut, not a date."  
  
"Why?"  
  
 _Because I would rather have a baby out of my ribs than date your mom again  
_  
"Just us talking about you. We have to do that sometimes. I didn't wanna be the one to have to tell you, but we are your parents."  
  
"Talking about what?"  
  
He wished she could be a step ahead of kids her age and grow out of the _'what's that'_ phase. There was nothing in the parenting books he'd struggled to digest eight years ago that counseled them on when kids stopped being so painfully talkative.  
  
Handing her the towel, he walked over to grab a spare one from the linen closet. Moth-bitten and age-worn. One day he'd be able to buy her brand new soft bath towels. He ran it over her hair anyway as she stood up.  
  
"About how we should ship you off to the circus," he joked, inwardly proud to hear a stifled giggle. Whether it was at the jab or the way his hands brushed the fabric over her head in a frenzy, it stroked his ego regardless. "You could be Peanut, the Amazing Peanut Vendor."  
  
Her head shook, spraying little droplets of water that settled on his shirt.  
  
"I wanna be an adagio."  
  
Surprised, his brows rose.  
  
"Where did you learn that word?"  
  
"One of the clowns from your work came into my class a couple months ago," she explained, stepping out of the bath and onto her pile of clothes. "They told us about all the different jobs in a circus. I wanna be an adagio, or a mime."  
  
"Well last month and the one before that you wanted to study film. Show me your best adagio then, c'mon."  
  
Imitating the stance her father took, Carrie folded the bath towel in place around her chest and stretched her arms wide. She felt every bit of the entertainment blood that pulsed through her veins.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Not in his dizziest dreams did Arthur imagine he'd be knocking on Hoyt's door of his own volition.  
  
 _"Come **in** , I said."  
_  
If not now then never. Taking in a great swell of breath, he cracked the door open and took a few steps in.  
  
"Oh, it's you," Hoyt said. Arthur hadn't even noticed that Hoyt looked up at him.  
  
He nodded, folding his arms politely in front of his person. A smile of coy gentility rested on his face.  
  
"You gonna say something, or stand there and waste my time lookin' at me? You remember I write your paychecks, right, Arthur?"  
  
"Oh, yeah," he jumped. "Sorry. Uhm ... can I sit down?"  
  
"Be quick with it."  
  
He'd only ever sat in the green chair once before, when he first applied to Ha Ha's. It was sturdy in a way that reminded Arthur of being an overgrown preschooler. Most of the time he just stood while Hoyt chewed him out for a few minutes, until he was told to scram. Then afterwards he would --  
  
 _"Earth to Arthur!"  
_  
"Shit," he muttered. "I'm sorry, Hoyt. I was - I was wondering about ..." A deep breath. "... if you could increase my hours."  
  
Arthur closed his eyes. There was a span of silence where he knew Hoyt was taking a drag of his cigarette, mulling over it, wasting his own time. He'd already made his mind up.  
  
"Your numbers go down in the summer, Arthur."  
  
"But they always go up in August, even higher than a few months earlier." His voice was tight -- a child explaining that it wasn't his hand in the cookie jar. "To pay for my daughter's school supplies."  
  
Hoyt smirked. "So why now? She stupid or somethin'? Goin' to summer school?"  
  
"No, I ... what?"  
  
A blood red heat radiated Arthur's face like an oven. His breath tightened.  
  
"I need to talk to an attorney about getting child support from my ex-wife," he admitted. "My mom's disability checks and my salary here are only helping us so much."  
  
"So you're not satisfied with your pay here."  
  
"I ... no, no, that's not what I meant, I --"  
  
"Don't forget, most guy would slam the door on your ass without looking back," Hoyt continued, snuffing out the bottom-most of the cigarette. Arthur felt a salivation in the back of his teeth for some nicotine. "Almost a year unemployed and being in the freak can does not look good on an application."  
  
Finding it wise, Arthur kept his mouth shut.  
  
"Plus, I did you a favor ... what, three years ago, when you brought the little crotch fruit and needed a sitter."  
  
Inexplicably, Arthur's pinky finger shook in his lap.  
  
 ** _My daughter is not a --  
_**  
"And why did you miss work on Sunday? I had to send Randall over to the kid's birthday party in your place. The fat fuck can't even tie a balloon animal. He said the kids all started crying."  
  
"I ... my daughter got sick," he said gently. "I left a message before anyone got here."  
  
Hoyt raised an ashy eyebrow, sitting up to jam a button on the answering machine a few times, until --  
  
 _"Hoyt, it's Arthur. Arthur Fleck? I'm **so** sorry for the short notice, but I need to call in today. My daughter woke up early this morning feeling really sick ... I might have to take her to the hospital."  
_  
In the background, Carrie could be heard retching, coming through the phone in static fragments. Arthur cringed, never wanting to see his little girl go through that much pain again.  
  
 _"If you can get somebody to cover my gig today, I promise, I'll make it up to you."  
_  
Hoyt clicked the stop button, fixating on Arthur with the same shifty eyebrow. Arthur looked down at his lap. His thumbs were wrestling each other for lack of anything useful to do with his hands.  
  
"So don't come to me askin' for any more favors," Hoyt said.  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. "Is that a no?"  
  
A lengthy silence forced his eyes closed. God, he wished he could stuff the whole damn pack of cigarettes down Hoyt's throat, _**burn him from the inside out --  
**_  
"Eh, fuck it, why not?"  
  
His eyes opened.  
  
"You're ... you're giving me --?"  
  
"You are on _thin fuckin' ice,_ Arthur," Hoyt said quickly, pulling a blue pen from the wooden caddy. "I'm doing this to help your kid. If I get _one_ more complaint, I'm docking your hours lower than what they are now. I will _try_ to get you nine extra because I like you, because the hospitals request you. And do _not_ tell the other guys about this. I do not need them all on my ass about extra hours."  
  
"I won't tell them," he breathed, something close to giddiness flaring in his chest, coiling around his bones.  
  
"And speakin' of ass, I got an gig for you today -- kids party at the petting zoo. Carter Bettis is the owner's name. Dad says his son likes magic tricks. You're good with the kids -- I don't know how, but they asked for Carnival."  
  
"Thank you Hoyt, I --"  
  
"Regardless if this child support thing goes through or not, once it's over, you are back to your regular hours. _Are we clear?_ I am stretchin' out the fuckin' budget _and_ my patience keeping you here. Now go. I'm busy."  
  
Not wanting to risk his good fortune, he obliged. The school picture of Carrie he had taped in his locker -- pig-tailed and tooth-missing, _six years old still, gripping his heart in her palm_ \-- seemed to smile wider at him, if at all possible.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Against his warning to sit in her booth like a normal person, Carrie hunched over in a squatting position, looking just above her menu to glance at her father. A mischievous grin tugged at her lips as she watched him write.  
  
She questioned how he could be so deep in his own head when everyone around them was talking and dishes were clattering. His writing was all sloppy, like his hand was trying to keep up with his brain. Squinting, she tried reading some of it upside --  
  
 _"Carrie,"_ he said gruffly. "Stop snooping."  
  
Her head disappeared behind the menu, delighting in her own deviousness.  
  
"What are you writing?"  
  
"I'm writing to my social worker about how you're a very conniving little monkey and I was thinking about selling you to the zoo."  
  
The grin that curved her mouth receded to a bottom-lip pout.  
  
"I don't like the word 'conniving,'" she concluded. The journal was swept back into his jacket.  
  
"I don't like it either," he agreed. "So don't be one."  
  
"I learned in my class yesterday," she began, pushing the menu down, "that Curious Carrie and ... and Creepy Carrie is an alliteration, when two words put together start with the same letter."  
  
"Yeah?" he smiled, endlessly entertained by her knowledge on subjects outweighing his own. "Can you think of one for me?"  
  
Leaning over the table on her elbows (which typically earned a scolding, but he got too caught up in watching her to say anything), her eyes roved over the ceiling to think. Her cheeks filled out with a dimple-cut smile as he saw the bulb spark to life in her brain.  
  
"Artful Arthur?" she suggested. The tremor in his hand softened as the corners of his mouth curled impulsively.  
  
"I like that," he decided. At the praise, she leaned back, satisfied.  
  
"I'll think of one for Nana, too," she said. "I wish Nana could come with us to dinner."  
  
Arthur huffed quietly. His mom's situation had been a rapid decline since she moved in. Since the beginning of the year, that decline had seen a decline of its own. Her dopamine pills to aid her Parkinson's had, as of late, piled migraines on top of her insomnia, dizziness, and dry mouth. Once she'd experienced white flashes in an attempt to get the mail for him, she concluded she was done for a while.  
  
He doubted that she would live to see Carrie turn thirteen. To be left alone to raise a teenager -- a pinball stream of terror zigzagged its way up his spine.  
  
"I know, Peanut," he said, unable to come up with anything better to say.  
  
"Guess what."  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"The cast list for the next school play came out today," she smiled, biting her lip in anticipation of the news.  
  
"And?"  
  
"I'm gonna be Glinda, the Good Witch of the North."  
  
His brows rose in surprise, feeling a crimson heat rise in his face. Briefly he had to think. A big pink dress. A princess dress. A fairy dress.  
  
Carrie in a pink dress and makeup. He smiled, feeling warm and proud and _wow,_ was she cute.  
  
"That's great, Peanut," he said, glowing.  
  
"Can we celebrate with ice cream?"  
  
"We can celebrate with _anything_ you want if you eat dinner first."  
  
As another giggle of glee burst out of her, a shadow shrouded the area between them.  
  
"Welcome to Merchant Diner, guys, how may ... **oh."** _  
_  
Arthur saw the girl's face before anything else. He'd admired before how her eyes were so small, but the blue seemed to pop when she wore just the right amount of eyeliner. Even if she radiated pure disgust. He liked what she was doing with her hair -- tied into a bun, her black bangs curtaining her oval face. She seemed ... _heavier_. Her nose was rounder.  
  
He had to remember it had been about six months since his last visit, but regardless. She looked cuter.  
  
Her attention rounded to Carrie.  
  
"Do you know this man, cutie?"  
  
The tip of a green Bic pen pointed at his chest accusingly. Carrie nodded, not understanding.  
  
"That's my dad," she said, more proud than the girl might have anticipated.  
  
The eyes shifted again to Arthur, looking less disgusted now and more skeptical, pushing her bottom lip out in a pout. The stiffening arousal he felt looking at her receded just as quick. He hated when people would question Carrie around him. It wasn't often, but it stung every time. What was the significance of Carrie wearing nicer, more expensive clothes than him? That didn't mean anything.  
  
"Jo, I'm --"  
  
"JoAnn."  
  
His eyes closed, feeling less and less visible by the second. She shifted to face Carrie, shutting him out. His mouth thinned into a grimace.  
  
"What do you want, cutie? What's your name?"  
  
"Can I please get the catfish and a side of mac n cheese?" she asked softly, manners at the forefront like he taught her.  
  
"Big appetite for such a small girl," JoAnn quipped, scribbling in her note pad. "You got a name yet?"  
  
"Oh, I'm sorry. Carrie," she mentioned. "And can I get a glass of chocolate milk, please?"  
  
JoAnn's eyes shifted back to Arthur, whose face burned.  
  
"I don't know, _Dad,"_ she said stiffly. "Can Carrie have a chocolate milk?"  
  
"... Yes."  
  
Carrie's heart thudded and sank. The realization settled in slowly, connecting the look on his face to his voice. It was a Done Day all of a sudden.  
  
When the woman named JoAnn left, the coarse hand that Carrie attempted to paw at consolingly retracted into the booth. A rosy tint slapped her face. As he stood up, he pressed a quick kiss to her halo of hair and promised "I'll be right back, okay? Stay right here."  
  
The high keening whine of oncoming laughter in his throat blended seamlessly with the tinkling bells from the overhead door.  
  
Arthur fell into the alleyway, almost stumbling over a mound of months-old garbage as his legs nearly gave way under him. Putting his hand over his mouth to stifle any laughter did nothing but create a disgusting suction sound. A feeling of shame ricocheted against his ribs. Tears stung his eyes.  
  
 _ **Burnburnburnburnburnburn --  
**_  
 _"Wowie,_ Fleck."  
  
Coming up for air -- holy shit, he could taste the funk of toxic garbage -- the tears were swiped on the back of his jacket sleeve. JoAnn stood some feet away, one arm resting on her stomach, the other holding up a cigarette between two green polished fingers. She looked at him as though he'd unleashed every dirty thought from inside the diner out to her in that moment.  
  
It was only then that he noticed her stomach, and its curvature. The button of her blouse, just where her belly button was, seemed to be just barely hanging in there. Through the thin gap that she was unable to tuck into her uniform, even through the form-fitting tee she wore underneath, he could see her stretch marks, pink and fat. A gross and primal instinct made his teeth salivate.  
  
He looked at her hand again.  
  
"Shouldn't you not be smoking?" he asked, trying too hard to not sound accusatory. Even though the doctor recommended Joss just cut back instead of going cold turkey, otherwise such sudden stress could lead to a miscarriage, she tossed them anyway for baby Carrie's health. The buildup of hormones for the first few weeks agitated her and, to that extent, him.  
  
As though just to annoy him, JoAnn took a particularly long drag, flicking a few ashes his way. They landed only a foot or so away from her.  
  
"Shouldn't you not be _breeding?"_ she drawled.  
  
A red hot flash of ugly, primitive protection snarled inside him, shifting his eyes and erupting a _"Fuck you"_ before he remembered _manners, manners, manners  
_  
Her belly bounced as she took a few steps toward him. A cloud of nicotine and spearmint made him go heady when she blew it past her glossy lips.  
  
"Someone beat you to it, man," she cajoled, tossing the cigarette. "So quit trying. I'm fucking twenty years old, you perv."  
  
\- - - -  
  
It was to Carrie's delight that her father walked back to their booth in an even better mood than when they arrived. Folding his arms over his chest, he said, "Peanut, I think we will get you ice cream."  
  
"Really?" she asked, eyes widening.  
  
"Anything you want."  
  
"Even _three_ scoops?"  
  
"I'm _telling_ you, Peanut," he drawled out, pulling out his journal once more, "anything you want."  
  
The chocolate milk was delivered at the end of his declaration. Inwardly he regretted that statement, watching her pupils already begin to dilate chugging down the sugary sludge. _Drink sludge and you'll get sludge brain_ flew out the window when Carrie got a hold of something she liked.  
  
A minute later, a puffy hand slapped a paper and a packet of cracked crayons down in front of her. Arthur glared.  
  
"Be nice to her," he griped, watching JoAnn turn. Both father and daughter hunched over, hard at work on their respective projects. He looked up briefly to see Carrie connecting a series of dots to outline a horse.  
  
 ** _I hurt. I want to hurt. I scare myself cus I want to make other people hurt. I don't becuse that's bad but I want to. I don't like when other peopol treat Carrie bad becuse they know me. Carrie ISN'T ME! How hard is that to UNDERSTAND, peopol?_**  
 _ **Sumtimes I think she'd do better if I was her imagenery friend**  
_  
The plate of catfish and mac n cheese was delivered right on his journal. Pulling it out from under, he saw an indent from the porcelain, and a splotch of wet ink. The plate had only just been washed.  
  
"Why didn't you order anything?"  
  
"Wasn't hungry, Peanut," he said distractedly, seeing out of his peripheral that she was tearing into it with her fingers. "Utensils, please."  
  
A sizeable chunk of breaded catfish on a thin napkin was pushed over to him, leaving a snail trail of oil on the table.  
  
"Nana says you don't eat enough," Carrie mentioned. He looked up to see an earnestness in her expression. "I want you to eat something."  
  
He slid it back over with his pointer finger, silently amused by the mess. One more thing for JoAnn to remember of him.  
  
"My medication makes me not very hungry, Peanut."  
  
"But you make _me_ eat even when I'm not very hungry," she reasoned, pushing it back to his side. "I don't like eating when you're not eating."  
  
He bit his lip, sensing that Carrie would be relentless about it. When he finally picked up the piece of meat, she leaned back and contented herself to the rest of the plate.  
  
"This is all I'm eating," he commented, although he had to admit it didn't taste bad. Oily, but not bad. "Whatever you can't eat, we'll bag for Nana, alright?"  
  
She nodded dutifully, blowing on a bite of mac n cheese.  
  
"I got news, too," he said to her. "Hoyt said he would give me more hours at work. You know what that means?"  
  
A beat. The delay in reaction worried him when he saw her mouth curl into a grimace.  
  
"You'll have less time with me?" she asked.  
  
"Only a few hours, Peanut," he added, quick but cautious. "That means I'll be able to pay for an attorney soon, to talk to the court about getting more money to take care of you."  
  
Her head tilted. One of her hands twisted a soft blue crayon like a ribbon between her fingers.  
  
"Since your mom makes more money than me ..." he continued, suddenly feeling a little stupid saying it out loud, "... the court might have her send money over so I could buy you things you really need."  
  
The classic Carrie head tilt of skepticism. "I don't think Mom would like that."  
  
 _Needing to is more important than not wanting to,_ an oft-repeated mantra from the hospital. A chill brushed up his spine. He could still hear the white-uniformed guard. He could almost feel the puncture of a syringe in his arm, digging for bone.  
  
"It's important for you to have it," he managed. When Carrie's hand once again moved to rest over his own, he didn't shy away. "So I can buy you things you need, and take you to places like your mom does."  
  
"Like dinner?" she asked, taking a great swig of her chocolate drink.  
  
"Like the dentist," he corrected. "Your mom told me you might need braces soon, and I know you're gonna be a big baby and want someone to hold your hand when you get them on."  
  
She scrunched her nose.  
  
"I'm not a baby," she huffed.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Are you done here?"  
  
Arthur smiled ruefully up at the waitress.  
  
"I want the rest to go," he stated plainly. "And my daughter needs ice cream."  
  
JoAnn was not restrained enough to suppress a huff through her nose. It was fat now in her pregnancy, and had grown less cute to him as the evening went on.  
  
"What do you want, cutie?" she asked.  
  
"Three scoops of ice cream," Carrie said, emphasizing her point with three fingers. "One mint chip, one butter pecan, and one rocky road for my daddy. Oh, and _lots_ of whipped cream! That's important."  
  
"You have money to pay for this?" JoAnn questioned. "You usually only order coffee when you come in to harass --"  
  
"I have money," he cut in, a warning look in his eye.  
  
"Okay then."  
  
Arthur managed a few spoonfuls of ice cream down. It was unfortunate sometimes, Carrie's politeness. Anytime he permitted her to have ice cream, she just _had_ to order one for him, regardless of if he could afford it. And he _had_ to eat it, regardless of his medication, because he once let slip how much he enjoyed the marshmallows.  
  
He believed she was occasionally too much of a daddy's girl for her own good.  
  
Two Styrofoam containers and a plastic bag cast a small barrier between them.  
  
"We only had a few pieces of catfish," he corrected.  
  
"I threw in some extra 'cause I felt bad," JoAnn said. "I know how hard it is for you to feed yourself, let alone a precious little girl."  
  
The brush of fingers against his shoulder stayed there long after she waddled away -- a big fat penguin. Briefly the image came to his mind, sickening as it was, of grabbing her hand and breaking all of her fingers; snapping the dainty pink engagement ring clean off and shoving it down her fucking throat --  
  
A $5 bill laid on their table. In sprawling handwriting: **_To help with baby,_** alongside a smiley face.  
  
"Keep the tip," JoAnn chided. "My son doesn't need your charity."  
  
 ** _And my daughter doesn't need your fucking pity  
_**  
Carrie's attention alternated between her innermost thoughts, childish as they were, and the brusque pace her father set as he pulled her from the diner. She skipped to keep his tempo, feeling full and bright and --  
  
The crinkling bag of Styrofoam and food smashed on the pavement, spraying its contents out in a mess of greasy breading and fragmented polystyrene (she felt clever remembering that word from science class). With a high grunt of _"Mmf",_ he kicked the plastic bag and mushy food away.  
  
He pulled her forward, forcing her shoes into the gunk.  
  
"Daddy, that wasn't for us!" she chided.  
  
\- - - -

  
Whatever the cause of his outburst had been, it had for the most part dissipated after a few hours' rest at home. He was in an amiable-enough mood to tuck her into bed before he went out to his comedy show.  
  
 _"Why ..."_ he began, pushing the covers snugly under her ribs "... did Nana tell me that Sophie from our floor came by to complain about you today?"  
  
She shrugged her shoulders. In her hands, she webbed Frankie's ear between her fingers, as though to say, _'look how cute and innocent I am.'_  
  
"You don't know?" he asked quietly.

"Nope."  
  
"Well why did Gigi say you told her that Auggie ate her pet hamster?"  
  
"I didn't say that!" she exclaimed, slightly outraged. Leaning into the bed, one hand dug into the other side of the mattress, trapping her. "I said that cats are _capable_ of eating hamsters, cause I read it in a book during recess. Auggie only likes dry food anyway. He couldn't eat a grasshopper if he tried."  
  
"You are a mischievous girl," he muttered. "And that's _not_ the point. Gigi cried for an hour and won't come over now because she's afraid the cat will attack her."  
  
Her shoulders rose before slumping down into the pillow again. _Whatever you say.  
_  
"You know this means you're grounded, right?" he questioned. Her nose scrunched in charmed disbelief. "That means no TV til Monday, and no Murray Franklin."  
  
"Daddy!" she exclaimed.  
  
"Carrie!" he mocked. "And you have to help me with dishes after dinner until Saturday."  
  
"Joke's on you, then," she retorted. "Cause you said you're going out to dinner with Mom on Thursday."  
  
"Then I'll dirty up some dishes to give you something to do," he joked. "You know, this might be your job one day -- taking care of me like I take care of Nana."  
  
Her eyes widened, forcing a small laugh out of him.  
  
"Like me sleeping on the couch?" she whispered.  
  
"Mm, no," he decided. "I can sleep in the bathtub."  
  
He would kill himself before he put Carrie in the position of caretaker. He only did it for his mom because he was in no position to deny her. Once Carrie was old enough to provide for herself and get the hell out of this city, probably in her college days, he would find the resolve to do what he should've done eight years ago and let her live a life without him dragging her back into this hellscape.  
  
It was the least he could do for her. If he couldn't get her to Colorado of his own volition, he could at least untether her as much as possible from Gotham and send her on her way with his love in her wake.  
  
\- - - -  
  
A dog that bites is a dog that bites.  
  
Arthur was hungry.  
  
The fabric of his jacket rubbed against his shoulder -- against the spot of JoAnn's overstuffed fingers trailing along the sinews and bone.  
  
It burned something inside of him. He wanted to kill her and he wanted to fuck her. Get the sweet spot under her ear and rove his hands over her swollen body, _choke the life out of her eyes --  
_  
He kissed Carrie's head before he left, and restarted the turn table for some ambient noise to filter pleasant dreams. She was clutching Frankie as he exited the room -- declaring him man of the house until Arthur got back.  
  
 _Hoodie up, key in your fist, walk fast and quietly  
_  
There was more than a little shame and nervousness gnawing at his bones. What kind of self-respecting man leaves his daughter and fragile mother holed away in their apartment, alone, because he was feeling apeish and frustrated? He should be lying in his pathetic bed, keeping guard over his girls ... he should be pulling his best girl up in the air, swinging her in a sloppy waltz until she crumpled into a small, giggling heap, relishing in her laughter ... he should ... he should ...  
  
"Oh, it's you."  
  
He should only be out for the hour. Maybe two, depending on the walk home.  
  
"You got condoms this time? Yeah? Okay, you're good. Follow me, sweetie."  
  
 _Sweetie._ He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets, ruminating on the last time somebody called him something so endearing.  
  
 _Arthur, sweetie ... **please** eat. The baby's only gonna get bigger when she gets here and she needs a strong daddy to push her around the park. Sweetie, sweetie --_

Her hair was soft and red, fitting for her name. In bleak orange lighting from a paper lampshade it seemed almost blood-colored and not _"candy colored -- I fuckin' love candy."_ She sashayed in front of him, the curve of a fleshy ass peering out from under a tacky satin dress that was so uptight and _unbecoming_ of her overt sweetness. Her two big front teeth betrayed her to look much younger than twenty-two, but she seemed to stay in a permanent high -- stinking of weed, but it kept her looking euphoric. Out of all this, it was the thick Boston accent that drove him _wild.  
  
_ What in God's name was she doing in Gotham when she could've been pleasuring her way through _Boston?_  
  
"You didn't bring a flower this time?" Rose observed. There was something constricting in multiple areas of his body, internal and external. His heart thundered from anxiety.  
  
"I - I, um ..."  
  
She smiled at him as she closed the door. It could outshine the sun.  
  
"I'm just teasing you, sweetie. Relax. You gave me eighty, I could buy whatever flowers I want."  
  
There was something to be said about the power of a woman's hand. He would never understand nor question why they were always softer and daintier, more lithe than his own. Tracing, interlocking, stroking, caressing ... if he missed one thing about Joss, it was her magnificent hands.  
  
Maybe it was another neon sign pointing out to Arthur that he was a weak, _weak_ man.  
  
Rose's hands were good, too; forcing him to sit on the edge of the bed, a nail dragging down the fabric of his shirt, her free hand palming him. His eyes screwed shut. It felt warm and intense and _fuck, he wanted to grab her --  
_  
"Not enough?" she questioned quietly.  
  
"No, it is, it's ..." he stumbled. "I'm - I'm on new medication, and --"  
  
"Sweetie, you need to _relax."  
_  
It was hard to be completely relaxed. Not when a beautiful redhead was sliding her hands along the leather of his belt notches, unfastening them and adding some relief to his waist, only to unzip him and oh, _god --  
_  
 _"There_ we go," she smiled, freeing a very sturdy, very stressed cock from his cute white skivvies. "What did the trick for ya?"  
  
"... call me 'sweetie' again," he managed, feeling flushed and hot and a strange myriad of other counter-intuitive sensations. He fished around in his jacket pocket for the condom. If he opened his eyes and saw the way the woman smiled up at him, he might've embarrassed himself right there.  
  
"I'll call you whatever you want," she growled. "It was _your_ eighty dollars first, sweetie."  
  
He opened his eyes enough to see her shoulders shimmying out of the electric blue spaghetti straps, freeing her torso to the warm, stale air of the orange-tinted room. Her hand stayed firmly around him, stroking and releasing to get the condom on in a way that forced him to do something with his hands because _oh god,_ did it feel good. One finger knuckle found use between his teeth, biting down hard. The other hand rested at the nape of her neck, too weak to command but beckoning her to stay.  
  
"You just gonna shoot the load right now, sweetie? I thought you paid for a full hour."  
  
"... do whatever you want," he said, bringing the bitten knuckle to his forehead. Three minutes in and he was already sweating like a pig.  
  
"Whatever I want?" she questioned. "On your time? So I can skip blowies?"  
  
A drained laugh pushed past his lips and he found himself nodding. He never liked oral with a condom on anyway. Joss was never gentle about it; one time it got snagged between her teeth and tore through the rubber. If he had to guess, that was probably when they conceived ...  
  
Two halves of his brain screeched in warning and crashed into each other, scattering his thoughts.  
  
 _No, no, don't think of her, **anything** but her  
_  
A pair of lips pounced and attached to the little shiver of exposed collarbone, drifting and scattering polite kisses along his neckline. She sat next to him, close enough to bump arms.  
  
"No hickeys," he said quietly, watching her hand pumping very near the swollen, dripping head.  
  
Her last kiss was accentuated by a sloppy, squelching _pop_ on his jugular vein. He wondered if she could feel the hard-pressed pump in his veins, or the way she set him on fire.  
  
"It's whatever _I_ wanna do," she growled, swiping at the spot under his exposed ear that --  
  
 _"Oh, my god."_  
  
"Get in the bed."  
  
With no thought, no hesitation, he found himself complying. A hand leaned into his chest for good measure anyway, stroking a thumb over a fat orange plastic button.  
  
"I thought I told you to relax," she chided. One leg was thrown over to lock him in place, and at the sight of curly red hair shielded by frilly black lace, he somehow grew harder and more lightheaded. "Why can't you have hickies, sweetie?"  
  
He didn't know if he was just weak in his primitive state or if she had imbued some mystic powers, but the sensation of his finger in Rose's mouth, bobbing in and out, swirling around a warm, wet tongue, left him briefly incoherent.  
  
"I ... I have work in the morning," he stumbled. His eyes screwed shut again upon contact with her clit, hidden behind a mesh of underwear. She responded to his roving touch with a high mewl, damp already.  
  
He wanted to rip them off.  
  
Some level of control was necessary. She tugged his pants further down his waist -- "Not fully off, right?" -- and pulled her dainty dress up over her head.  
  
For the smallest, most impossibly intimate of moments, Arthur's heart hammered as she leaned down to rest her chest on his. The feeling of her stomach grinding against his swollen cock almost pushed him to do something impulsive and stupid. He wanted to break the rules and kiss her on the lips, hard and wet and grossly desperate.  
  
He settled for her neck instead, getting lost in a vague vanilla scent.  
  
As if it was an afterthought, she looked between them, herself bereft of any clothing, and laughed.  
  
"Almost forgot about this," she teased, sitting upright. He would've gotten lost in that toothy smile if he hadn't seen stars. "Wouldn't that have been funny?"  
  
Not trusting himself to speak, Arthur nodded. One hand found itself on Rose's fleshy hip when she sunk down -- finally, _finally._ He didn't want to command, but beg. He wanted to be pathetic and oh--  
  
She wasted no time picking up a fast rhythm, forcing his hips up as a knee-jerk reaction. A huff of "god _damn"_ stroked his ego a little. "Why can't your coworkers see your hickies? They bet you don't fuck like this, do they?"  
  
Huffing. Sputtering. Something hot but not wholly unwelcome wove like a fist in his guts.  
  
"I have a kid," he struggled. "Can't let her see."  
  
"Oh, how nice," Rose huffed. "How old is she?"  
  
"I don't wanna talk about her," he said, forcing his eyes open. His vision was waning as he landed on the sight of her legs on either side of him, grinding on him in a way that felt just -- "Tell me I ..."  
  
"Tell you what?"  
  
"... tell me I feel good. Tell me I'm real."  
  
"Kinky man," she smiled. "I like it."  
  
Her hand ruffled through her sleek red hair. He wondered how many men she'd fucked to feel like this was normal. How many men she'd fucked today.  
  
His other hand clenched tightly on her hip, both of them forcing her down at a pace that shocked a squeal out of her.  
  
 _"That feels so good,"_ she obliged. _"So_ fucking good, daddy. It's so big --"  
  
 _ **"Stop."  
**_  
Rose's hips ground to a gradual halt, leaving Arthur an incoherent, heaving mess as he took the time to really feel, against his better judgement or not.  
  
"What's wrong?" she asked. "Most of the guys get off on being called daddy."  
  
"Stop ... stop saying that word."  
  
"Whatever you say, sweetie," she said skeptically, raising a drawn brow. Her eyes shifted down below. "Oh, I can feel you didn't like that. I'm sorry."  
  
"Just ..." His hand rested on his forehead, sticking with sweat. "Not tonight, I guess."  
  
"Are you sure, sweetie? I can feel you're close to bustin' and I don't wanna see you waste eighty on fifteen minutes."  
  
His eyes sunk closed, conceding. A heartbeat got caught in his throat.  
  
"Okay, keep going."  
  
\- - - -  
  
"I didn't know you had a little girl."  
  
Rose was resting next to him, tracing the veins of his hand as it rested on her perched thigh. There was a pink and red portrait of a woman with her leg perched over her head -- a ballerina.  
  
"I didn't know you got a new tattoo," he said stiffly. "It looks nice."  
  
"Had a thousand-dollar day a few months ago and decided to treat myself," she grinned. A sloppy kiss was pressed under the curvature of his jaw, marking it with wetness and a deeply embarrassing blush. Weren't they just two peas in a damn pod. "My grandma was a ballerina in the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia, back in the thirties."  
  
 _And you're here doing the lord's work_  
  
"Tell me about your little girl," she pressed. Although he consented to her bringing his hand closer, blotting the freckles that he might not have liked in any other context, he would've rather burst out into laughter right in her face and take off running than bring the topic of his best girl, his beautiful little girl into ... _this place._ "I love kids. If I have a daughter, I wanna name her Louise. Or Gail. I love that old fashioned shit, y'know?"  
  
"I don't wanna talk about her," he repeated. The press of her chin on his shoulder caused her next breath to land on the exposed area of his neck, unknowingly red.  
  
"Why not?" she asked, eyes narrowing. He had to wonder how many men willingly gushed about their kids when they were still half-hard and lying next to a random naked woman, to the point that the mantra _'not the time or place'_ evaded her vocabulary.  
  
Rose was a smart young woman, but lacked all courtesy for privacy that wasn't her own.  
  
"I don't talk to anyone else here, you can trust me," she said, saccharine and entirely too sweet. "You didn't bring me a flower this time. Can't you at least tell me her name?"  
  
His eyes roved, glassy from exhaustion. He would have to get going soon.  
  
"... her name is Judy."  
  
"Oh, that's a _cute_ name!" she exclaimed, stringing out the last word in a way that plucked a cord of anxiety in his stomach. "I had a friend named Judy when I was in high school, but spelled with an I at the end. But she died. Drove her car off a bridge. She wanted to move to Oregon, but her daddy pulled her out of school to help take care of her dying mom."  
  
Unsure of if he was supposed to respond to the prolonged quietude, he said gruffly, "Sorry to hear that."  
  
"It happens, I guess. I think she realized nobody ever gets out of Gotham, so she'd rather die in the shithole and make it look worse to scare people away."  
  
His eyes stayed on the ceiling.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Carrie had evidently been up and down at least once in the time that he was away. The half-filled glass of orange juice and the sudden appearance of her hooded frog blanket shrouding her back insinuated as much.  
  
His movements were deliberately slow. Despite Rose's insistence of "Come visit us again soon, sweetie," he left the area feeling infinitely more alone than when he arrived. Something in his stomach had coiled itself into a tight knot, as though the anxiety was blocking what little was in his system from digesting.  
  
A hand, washed thoroughly and furiously, brushed gently over the pairs of clothes laying next to each other. They couldn't be more different. One bland thermal top, holey and having washed its comfort away with age, next to a pink-striped pajama top, buttoned with fat pink flowers.  
  
He pulled out the thermal top carefully, and the blue bottoms under it, feeling any faster movements would result in a thorough washing of the clothes and the dresser. With another glance to Carrie, undisturbed and taking up the entire right side of the bed, he headed for the bathroom.  
  
He barely got his vest unbuttoned, alleviating the enervating warmth in his chest, before he crumpled.  
  
Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes and the bones in his back contorted against overworked skin, creating something he knew looked more beast than man. Uncontrollable rasps of heaving sobs pushed past his lips in spitting gasps, waiting for the inevitable bile to force its way out. He shouldn't have eaten. He should've known better.  
  
It came up almost as soon as he'd allowed his back to rest against the tile under the window. He scrambled to get to the bowl in time, feeling an agonizing sensation of oil, fish, and sugar wretch its way back up. A shaking hand pressed to his forehead, beaded with exertion. One stray curl clung to his sticky skin.  
  
He should've known better. _He should've known better._  
  
He hoped to god he hadn't woken his mother or Carrie with his heaving.  
  
\- - - -  
  
It was 4 AM by the time his body relented and allowed him some rest. He could only walk around the cramped, tattered walls so many times before his feet became sore.  
  
He couldn't sleep when the first morning light broke through a slit in the curtain, barely visible but putting a strip of iridescent glow on her soft pink lips, curled into a thin pout in her sleep. Her hair practically shimmered, _starving_ for light.  
  
He couldn't sleep when he had to get up in a little under three hours to pack her lunch, check her homework, her clothes, her --  
  
He rolled over, a wave of self-disgust overriding whatever sweetness she presented to him.  
  
Six o'clock rolled around and saw an arm slinking over his own, forcing him to lie on his back. A blonde head and a damp rabbit ear tickled his chin. Arthur pawed gently at his daughter's hair, waning only when he started to doze. The rise and fall of his chest rocked her into a comforting sleep when she let out a small _"hmph"_ of fussy alertness, well before her time to get up.  
  
When he would wake her later, a dribble of drool on the right breast of his shirt went unspoken of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The diner scene is inspired by one of my favorite movies, The Florida Project. The little girl in that movie gives me major Carrie vibes.
> 
> I really hope this chapter is okay. I spent three days writing it.
> 
> Too many stories I've read have Arthur as some sort of sad virgin. This is sex worker erasure (although I do love those stories) and I felt a need to rectify it. Arthur is, y'know, a man, and this is Gotham City in the 1980s.
> 
> Using the inflation calculator, $80 in 1981 equates to $230 in 2020. Arthur is a needy boy.


	13. Courtesy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: period-typical misogyny against sex workers -- Joss' point of view, not my own

_"Art, wake up ... Art. Artie, honey ... **Arthur,** for god's sake!"  
_  
 _"Huh ... what?"  
_  
 _The assault of the lamplight on his retinas woke him enough to ground a palm in his eyes, seeing stars. Through a scrunched eye, Arthur looked at his wife and her form-fitting nightgown, standing at her edge of the bed. She smelled so strongly of talcum powder and pickle juice that it hit him into semi-consciousness. A strange myriad of smells.  
_  
 _"Arthur, I think it's time."  
_  
 _Still half-dozing, he managed groggily, "Time for what?"  
_  
 _Rolling her eyes heavenward, Joss rested a hand on her curved hip. The past few months had turned her body into a case study on acute and obtuse angles.  
_  
 _"Time for the Yankees game -- it's time to go to the **hospital to have the baby**... oh, **shit."  
**_  
 _More alert, he shifted onto his elbow, feeling frozen. He watched his wife's hair shield her face from view as she bent over the nightstand -- to the best of her heavy ability -- and blew out rhythmic, intense breaths.  
_  
 _"You're sure?" he asked quickly, already reaching over to fumble around for his socks in the mesh of crumpled clothing at her feet. "You're really sure?"  
_  
 _"Yes, I'm sure," she groaned, beginning to stand. The fabric of her favorite nightgown, stretched beyond its wearable limits, shifted tightly and uncomfortably on her belly. "It's been like this for a few hours. I was just in the kitchen trying to open the jar of pickles when I think my water might have broken."  
_  
 _"Okay ..." he said testily, standing. Unsure of whether she might appreciate a hand on her belly or break his fingers, he moved to the closet instead. "... and how many hours is a few hours?"  
_  
 _"Just before three this morning, so ... three hours? I didn't wanna worry you if it was too early, since -- y'know -- my induction is next Friday." She puffed. The floorboards groaned under the weight of her swollen limbs as she made a slow beeline for their hospital bag. "This is already hard to deal with. She kicked into my fucking ribs."  
_  
 _Remembering a group lesson on **courtesy** he learned in the hospital, Arthur bit his tongue before he confided that they were going to get a lot harder to deal with. He settled on an old grey and white-checkered button-up his mom had gotten him for Christmas, along with a pile of old maternity dresses Joss had stuffed in the back of their closet, never to see the light of day. The grey had been washed out with time that he suspected predated even his existence, but he was tired and too frazzled to think about anything other than it's time, it's **time**  
_  
 _Oh no, it's **time** time --_  
  
What an unnaturally familiar sight it was, Arthur thought. Two days later and he was again sandwiched in a booth, sitting across from a pretty blonde, half of her face obscured by an obnoxiously red menu. Ten or so years ago, catching each other's gazes and then reverting would have made them erupt in giggles of disbelief in their fortune.  
  
 _ **What's so funny, Mrs. Fleck? I don't know, Mr. Fleck, but boy, is it handsome.  
**_  
His journal was open and putting his hand to good, cramping use. They hadn't said much from the time she picked him up to them getting to the red booth near the front window.  
  
"So Carrie told you I'm pregnant again?" Joss asked. As her eyes flickered up, his went back down.  
  
A grunt of "mm" by way of confirmation got caught in his throat as he reached for a napkin. He hated writing, but conceded its necessity for his social worker. That wasn't to say he liked the smear of ink on the shell of his left hand. "Your fault for trusting the news with our eight-year-old. Carrie couldn't keep a secret if her life depended on it."  
  
"So if you're not going to eat, would you not mind, then, if I ordered food on your behalf? I need breakfast sausage."  
  
Nodding tightly, still occupied with the smudge of grey ink shining on his hand, he remembered, "You hate sausage."  
  
"I do, but the baby doesn't. I've been craving it like crazy, but not the fancy organic crap in the markets near my house. A greasy spoon type."  
  
He nodded, not understanding but knowing that he couldn't. There was once a time where he routinely said "wife is pregnant" by way of explaining his 1:30 AM purchases of two jars of Vlasic sweet pickles because _I don't know why I'm crying but the baby needs them now, Art._  
  
A ghost of a smirk crept into the curvature of his face.  
  
"So the baby's due in ... October?"  
  
"Late October, early November," she waved off, distracted by the sorting of thin brown napkins into equal piles. His eyes traveled to the ceiling, fixated on the flickering of a fluorescent bulb on its last pangs of life.  
  
"And you and him started dating in ...?"  
  
"February."  
  
"... those numbers don't add up," he grumbled, closing his eyes in thought.  
  
"New year, new baby, I guess," she laughed sheepishly. It was the same teasing smile she used to quell her parents' shock over their first (and, until present, only) grandchild. _"Oops."  
_  
"Well ... that was fast," he said, trying to distract himself with more writing.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"I mean ..." He looked around them, unused to the implications of such talk in public. "... well, it took us seven years and one accident til you got pregnant with Carrie. This guy, the first time you meet him?"  
  
"Keith doesn't smoke."  
  
 _Doesn't smoke cigarettes, maybe. Cut the bullshit._  
  
"So why isn't he here, looking after his pregnant girlfriend?"  
  
"Because I'm a big girl who can handle herself." Thin pink lips softened into what he could almost mistake as amusement, if Joss had any sense of humor at all. "Not every man uses himself as a human shield for his pregnant wife the way you do."  
  
"You can order for me," he said, taking back the reigns of the conversation, "but I'm not paying for stuff I won't eat."  
  
"Carrie said you were throwing up when you returned home the other night. New medication?"  
  
He nodded solemnly, grimacing at Carrie's lack of a filter with a mother she wasn't close to.  
  
"Might I ask _why_ you left our child alone 'til one in the morning? You weren't out seeing that hooker kid again, were you?"  
  
Arthur's bones rattled. Rose was not some dirty street trick and she most definitely was _not_ a kid.  
  
"Don't talk about her," he snapped, receding into himself once the words were out. "... Rose is different ... she wants to be a professional photographer ... and she's twenty-two."  
  
She laughed, high and toothy and _condescending._  
  
 _"Arthur,"_ she drawled, "if every girl who whored her way through college to get a better life for herself _succeeded,_ I'd be the only woman left in Gotham."  
  
She pushed a hefty stack of napkins his way.  
  
"Oh yeah, you whored your way through your career, not college," he snapped, fumbling in his jacket pocket for his smokes and lighter. The courtesy he extended to his pregnant wife of quitting smoking could not be extended to his strenuous ex-wife. "You drive me to smoke."  
  
"My point still stands."  
  
 _"Did you forget our daughter?"_ he snapped, reaching her eye, glinting.  
  
"Calm _down,_ Art. Jesus, you're always so _wound up_ about Carrie."  
  
"One of us has to be."  
  
Jocelyn's eyes narrowed. Slinking down into the uncomfortable wooden booth, her palm slapped onto the stack of napkins that she'd given to him, pulling them back. His hand shook as he tried to light the cigarette between his chapped lips.  
  
"If you're not gonna eat, you don't fuckin' need these," she growled. "Can we have one nice conversation that doesn't revolve around Carrie? I love her to death but we're adults. We need other interests."  
  
"I don't wanna talk with you about other interests." He flicked his tongue against the patch of lip that the paper of the cigarette stuck to as he pulled it away. A heap of ash collected on his corner of the table. "You asked me to dinner to talk about our child; that's what I'm doing. Other interests is what drove you out."  
  
 _"Money_ is what drove me out," she corrected. "I needed ... _freedom_. For a little bit. Freedom from Gotham, and -- and --"  
  
"Freedom from your daughter's fourth birthday."  
  
When his eyes flickered over her face, her jaw squared. A high heat rested in her cheekbones. Game set and matched.  
  
"How's your job?" she asked, impulsively resting a hand to sit on the swell of her stomach.  
  
Out of some courtesy, he filtered the smoke out of the corner of his mouth.  
  
"Same old, same old," he mused. "Did a gig yesterday for some rich family with year-old twin boys. The older kids loved getting their faces painted. Danced for about two hours so my legs are killing me, but it was nice."  
  
"My back's been killing me," she complained, pressing her palm into the ache for theatrical emphasis. Just as he remembered her. "We should go to a massage parlor some time."  
  
Fat chance. He hated being touched by strangers. It took him long enough to open up to Rose without cackling when she took her bra off the first time.  
  
"You gave the _best_ back massages when I was pregnant with Carrie," Joss cut in.  
  
He scratched his head, then his chin, unsure of her angle. If she believed she could beguile him into giving her a massage, he was sorry to disappoint. Knowing what her own hands were capable of, and knowing she'd put them to use on their child, he left the apartment with an itch in his fist to hit her. Seeing the subtle swell of her stomach put him in the awkward position of courtesy overruling his thoughtless anger.  
  
"Do you have any theme going for the nursery?" he asked quickly, focusing on a cat scratch, red and crusty, on one of his knuckles. "Since you actually _can_ build a nursery this time."  
  
Carrie's makeshift nursery had been nothing more than her crib stuffed in the corner of their room and her assorted baby products aligned in their necessitated places around the apartment. Raising a baby in a one-bedroom was their top mistake, aside from the irresponsibility of neglected condom breakage via Joss' tricky teeth.  
  
"Keith is thinking about an outer space mural --" She crossed her arms, tantalized by the question. "-- but I don't know ... I kind of want a safari room. I found the cutest giraffe statues."  
  
"You and giraffes," he said under his breath, not entirely mirthless. A puff of smoke escaped in a laugh he didn't have time to mull over.  
  
A waitress came over with a pad of paper, her glossy lips smacking with gum. She couldn't have been much older than seventeen.  
  
Arthur's attention was caught by Joss' enthusiastic order. He got lost halfway in the request for the aforementioned breakfast sausage -- with a separate container to go -- as well as diner-style meat loaf, seasoned potato wedges, and a separate plate of sweet potato fries, okra, and -- in what he assumed was an attempt at feigning health to balance it out -- steamed vegetables and Diet Coke. He bit his knuckle, trying to not look so amused.  
  
"Oh, and silver dollar pancakes to go. For my daughter," she beamed. "And can we switch to a cushioned booth? Baby is wreaking havoc on my back."  
  
Damn his own politeness. In the whirlwind of internal nostalgia, he found himself extending his free hand to his ex-wife, feeling a pang of sympathy that she was already slightly winded in her efforts to stand. He swore he felt his hand being squeezed when she readily accepted the unspoken help.  
  
Neither of them let go as they walked the several feet to the softer booths in the back corner. Her hands were soft, clean, his own guaranteeing loyalty. It was only as she sat down and he put their water glasses on the new table that the connection was broken.  
  
"How much of that food is for baby," he started, "and how much of it is for Joss?"  
  
"Oh, be nice. I gained sixty pounds on Vlasic pickles with Carrie 'cause it was all I could keep down."  
  
"So you'll gain sixty pounds on diner foods this time," he joked.  
  
"Remind me why I divorced you again," she said, smiling.  
  
He grimaced. Things could only be so good for so long in his world.  
  
 _"You're not funny,"_ he snapped. Startled by the machismo, Joss stopped midway through her tearing of a straw's paper to stare at him.  
  
"It was a _joke,_ Arthur. _Fuck_. Relax, you maniac."  
  
"I don't joke about things that piss me off."  
  
"Y'know for being a party clown, you really could use a better sense of humor. All that time you spend in that suit, you think you'd learn to unwind."  
  
A smear of coral-colored chapstick formed a pink ring around the white straw.  
  
"I'm a party clown ... fifty hours in a week. And my mom is getting disability checks. And I'm still just getting by for the three of us."  
  
He was tap-dancing around the actual subject, wanting to get her in a good mood before he sprung it on her that court may be a necessity.  
  
"Why don't you just put your mom in a home? Then Carrie has her room back, and you have your room."  
  
An incredulous heat licked at the nerves in his neck, coating it red. It was much less sweet than Rose's warm tongue.  
  
"That's my _mom,"_ he balked. Joss threw him an _'if you say so'_ shrug that viscerally reminded him where his daughter got the snark from. "And besides ... I can't pay for room and board for her. I'm not just gonna throw her out onto the street."  
  
"I can only tell you so many times to get a better job. Your factory job paid well."  
  
 _I would literally rather drink hot motor oil than go back to the factory_  
  
"Is your mom's Parkinson's getting worse?" she cut in again. He shook his head.  
  
"Not much, but her mobility isn't where it should be. She tried to go downstairs to get the mail a few weeks ago and pinched a nerve in her back."  
  
"Hmph -- something we could bond over."  
  
Another palm pressed into the dip in her spine.  
  
"Carrie's got a concert coming on the eighth that she wants my mom to come to, and ..." he hesitated. "... she wants you there, too."  
  
"Mm." After a hard swallow of ice water, "I might come. You've seen one, you've seen 'em all, y'know?"  
  
Arthur's throat closed up. He wanted to dump the remains of his cigarette in her drink for her indifference.  
  
 _Our **child,** Joss._  
  
"You have a pretty damn blase attitude towards our daughter's interests, you know, Joss?"  
  
"Arthur, you cannot possibly enjoy those concerts. They're all screechy and out of tune, all over the place. I have to take an Aleve every time I go to one, and I can't do that this time!"  
  
"... it means a lot to Carrie. And it's the high school choir she's performing with -- she signed her name on the roster of kids who wanted to do the higher-level music." He snubbed the cigarette into the pile of napkins, half-interested in watching them ember and curl away, almost as if in pain from the burn. "Suck it up and be a mom."  
  
"I _am_ a mom," she gritted. A stray curl fell out of her constricting blonde bun and bobbed in front of her right eye. She swiped at it furiously. "I love that kid."  
  
"Then why did you hit her?"  
  
His hand slapped over his mouth as the words registered. Her eyes widened.  
  
A cough, muffled, wrenched its way though until --  
  
"Oh, no," Joss muttered. As a sharp peal of barely-contained laughter jettisoned out of her ex-husband, she craned her neck to see if anybody was watching. She had half a mind to tell them to fuck right off if they were watching. Damn people today have no courtesy for privacy.  
  
She turned back to his hulking, sweating form. A grimace curled into her upper lip when something painful and wet got stuck in his throat, gasping for air.  
  
"What do you mean, I hit her?" she hissed.  
  
"Carrie, she ..." he managed, still desperate for air. Taking in a great gulp, he continued. "... when I was giving her a bath, I saw -- a bruise on the back of her ear ... she said you got pissed off and backhanded her."  
  
At a loss, Joss swiped at the bridge of her nose, then her raised eyebrow.  
  
"Why were you bathing Carrie?" she asked suddenly. "She's a big girl -- she can do it herself."  
  
"Well ... _you_ bathed her --"  
  
"I'm her _mother,"_ she stressed, pressing into that bony space between her breasts for frustrating emphasis.  
  
"-- and I saw a _bruise_ behind her ear." His nose twitched, not unlike a rabbit, not unlike his daughter. Unlike them, he had the glower to make Joss concede into silence. "Joss, did you hit her?"  
  
The tilt of her head, her eyes averting to the dusty brown slats of their booth's window, and Arthur closes his eyes.  
  
"Oh, my god," she sighs. "You act like I doubled my fists and knocked the blood from her nose."  
  
He fisted his jacket for the pack of cigarettes again. Briefly he felt the tantalizing urge to blow the smoke right in her face, _hope your baby enjoys that --_  
  
"You hit our fucking kid," he growled, slapping the pack on the table, the happy red coating taking up enough attention to make him wish it was literally any other color. Steadying the stick between his fingers, Arthur settled his ex-wife with a resentful furrowing of eyebrows. "Her own mother, I can't believe it."  
  
"You do _not_ know what she's like when she's at my house," Joss countered, forcing a roll of green eyes up to the fluorescent ceiling. "She almost sprayed fifteen bucks of shampoo across my bathroom floor --"  
  
"I don't care ..." he cut in, dangerously close to flicking the ashes right in her face. "... if those bottles were a thousand each. I don't care _how_ annoying or loud or aggressive she is. Hit the fucking wall like I do, but Carrie is off limits."  
  
"You're so soft with her, Jesus ..."  
  
"Maybe she behaves on my time, _because_ I'm so soft with her," he drawled, taking in a long, strenuous drag, without the courtesy of blowing it out the side of his mouth.  
  
At least not until she leaned in on her elbows, subtly imploring him for some tobacco. Then the smoke found a route to the window.  
  
"The smoke's not good for your damn baby," he said by way of feigning concern. Whatever differences they as adults had between them, the baby was to be Carrie's sibling, if only by half. He _had_ to have some respect. "And Carrie learns nothing by hitting."  
  
"Arthur, this has been a seven-year battle between us. You have your parenting methods and I have mine."  
  
"I do _not_ want Carrie coming to my house every week with new bruises," he stressed, pushing the cigarette in his hand for emphasis, "like she has been the past two times."  
  
He refused to acknowledge the bruise he left on her arm on his week with her. It physically pained him to reconcile. He shuddered.  
  
"Well I warn her and I _warn_ her that she's pushing my limits. I can only go so far, especially when I'm fucking _pregnant."_  
  
"So go in another room and ... _god, Jocelyn."_  
  
Her lips curled into a pout, looking like she'd swallowed a lemon. Twitching his nose once more, he settled one elbow on the table and settled his gaze down at the tiled floor, looking dour and very not hungry. So rarely did he use her full name, it signified a barely sustained volcanic eruption of an argument on the surface. Carrie had been privy to such explosive fights when they were still married, and more often than not her name was used more than all the swear words combined.  
  
No use in fighting it now.  
  
 _"What is the big fucking deal?"_ she cried out. "My mom used to smack the shit out of me with her Bible for back talking. I turned out fine!"  
  
Flicking his tongue out to wet his lips, Arthur hesitated. A pile of ash grew further and further on his little corner of the table. So many things on his mind, mounting in urgency to aid his anxiety and drive his pulse further through his veins. Finally --  
  
"Another one of Carrie's classmates died today."  
  
 _"What?"_  
  
His misfortune that Joss was in the middle of a drink of water when he said it. Quietly he flinched, feeling a hit of guilt. Eight years earlier, he remembered, the doctors ordered her to take bed rest for the last month of her pregnancy. The shock of her husband's attempted suicide had made her blood pressure skyrocket and gave her a great happy bundle of leg swelling and preeclampsia.  
  
 ** _You almost died, Arthur, and you almost took our fucking baby with you_**  
  
"The school called me today," he continued despite himself, biting his lip. His eyes closed, recalling, not wanting to. "Henry Belcher -- got hit by a car over on Polk Street this morning."  
  
"That ... that's the fourth kid since ... since she started preschool. Fuck, that's _one every year."_  
  
"I fucking hate this city," he mused, allowing himself the relief of cold water. "I hate all the danger. They reported on the news, he ran out into oncoming traffic while his grandfather chased him with a belt."  
  
He didn't want to look up to confirm that the watery crack in Joss' breath was indeed her crying. His attention turned to the diner's counter, wondering if they could hurry up and appease her with food.  
  
"Does Carrie know?"  
  
"Nah, I let her stay home today," he admitted. "I'll tell her later."  
  
He was not happy with himself for bending the rule about not watching television, although he expressly forbade the evening news and practically _begged_ his mother to not watch her Thomas Wayne interview tonight should the man let anything slip about the kid. Disciplining Carrie, though, in the face of suffocating death he hated to imagine himself in the middle of, felt tactless and vile.  
  
He could discipline her tomorrow. Or the next day.  
  
Joss' hands covered her face, shaking her head in overwrought, teary-eyed disbelief.  
  
"He came to Carrie's _birthday_ last year," she sobbed. He winced.  
  
"Always harder to manage when you know the kid."  
  
It probably looked bad -- no, it definitely looked bad to be seated with a crying pregnant woman and to do nothing about it. In his own experience, it was best to just let her cry until she was finished the same way she callously made their baby learn to cry herself to sleep -- "the crying it out method," she explained. He hated that phase probably more than the baby did.  
  
He opened his journal again, at a loss of something better to do than watch Joss dab her face with thin napkins only to cry harder. She fervently rubbed the apex of her growing belly, snagging her nail on a plastic button.  
  
 ** _This city is terrible, too dangerus for my daughter. She needs better. She deserves better._**  
 ** _An other one of her class mates was killed today, 7 years old, can you believe THAT? Hit by a taxi just outside of Hert's Pharmacy where I used to get my meds. Thank god I switched to Helm's. Imagine! You and your dad walk to get his meds and you always have to see the blood stain where your friend, your SEVEN YEAR OLD FRIEND! was killed on the street._**  
 ** _It should be illegal in the ~~laws of the univ~~ laws of nature that kids are buried before their parents. That's my biggest fear, nothing in the whole world makes me feel so itchy and disgusted to think about. I don't like thinking about it at all. Maybe I shouldn't have writen it down. I might tear out this page._**  
 ** _The boy probably lived with his grandpa, I ~~rememmb~~ saw an old Asian man drop the boy off for Carrie's birth day party a few weeks ago. The boy was very well behaved and got her a toy model of Engeneer Scotty, like from Star Trek? I told him he was allowed back when ever he wanted._**  
 ** _I wished I knew so I could have said some thing but really nobody cares what I think. But I would have HELPED!_**  
 ** _That hert's, doesn't it?_**  
 _ **I haven't told Carrie. I don't want to tell Carrie. She's going to cry and cry and cry or not cry at all and I don't know which is worse! Being a dad sucks some times.**_  
  
The young waitress returned to their table with a tray of the desired food, thankfully not sparing Arthur a skeptical glance when she caught sight of Jocelyn wiping her tears away. Red rims and streaks of mascara like drips of black milk caked her cheekbones. A shrapnel of emotion hit him in the chest, forcing away the impassivity he kept at the forefront of his mind.  
  
Even puffy and crying and stuffing her face with sweet potato fries, she was still the most captivating woman he'd ever seen. If he got too lost in her, on a good day, it was easy to imagine they were still married, thirteen years strong and still going out on happy dates. That that was _his_ child she carried around in her fucking _gorgeous_ belly. More little Jocelyns.  
  
He chased the thought away as something grew tight in his groin.  
  
"Boy or a girl, do you think?" he asked. Her eyes, glassy, were turned to the tacky pictures above Arthur's head -- license plates from Florida and vintage Coke ads from the 1930s, very saturated and unnerving in how _relentlessly_ happy the kids looked. A far cry from the patrons sitting just below it.  
  
"I think it's a boy," she concluded, still staring above him. "My stomach is hanging low."  
  
"Your ... stomach was low with Carrie, too."  
  
"But I just ... I _feel_ like it's a boy this time."  
  
"Why? Cause he has two boys already?"  
  
He took a potato wedge before he could stop himself. More or less studying it between his fingers, at a loss for anything better to do. The cigarettes only shied away his appetite so much. A voice, nine years younger, still nagged at his mind that both she _and_ the baby needed him to eat.  
  
"A mother's intuition," she corrected. "When you know, you know."  
  
"Well you got a fifty-fifty shot in the dark with Carrie," he admitted. "Any names yet?"  
  
"Keith likes the name Julien James, but I'm stuck on Christopher Howard."  
  
A flare of hot indignation hit him without thought. Boy or girl, he did not spend a month in a psychiatric ward, dreaming and swooning over a baby boy that looked like _him,_ called _him_ daddy, only for Joss to give the name to a kid that wasn't his.  
  
He bit his lip.  
  
"Christopher Robbins?" he questioned, not understanding how Joss could be so _ridiculous_. "Like the Winnie the Pooh kid, Christopher Robin?"  
  
"What's wrong with it?" she asked defensively.  
  
"Nothing ... nothing." His brows rose. "Just gives _Arthur Fleck_ a run for its money."  
  
He almost looked amused, until he saw the thin-lipped scowl she tossed at him, _daring_ him to say more.  
  
"Are you happy?" he questioned, breaking the barrier of tension.  
  
"Mm." Through a mouthful of sappy butterscotch (he could practically feel the minty chocolate residue from days earlier seeping in his throat), "Getting one of each is fine, I guess."  
  
That ... wasn't the response he was expecting. His brow knitted on impulse, and he was not blind to how her eyes deliberately rover anywhere but his as she took in a forkful of greasy okra.  
  
A far cry from the bubbly 26-year-old who giggled her way through Thanksgiving grace with her parents that morning just to end it with _"and we give most gracious thanks for the addition to the family coming in May."_ Inelegant and _so unbelievably cheesy,_ but sweet and _bursting_ with the excitement of new motherhood.  
  
The potatoes were too much, he decided, and put it back on the plate. A thin sheen of grease coated the pads of his thumb and forefinger like ... like ...  
  
He was too tired to think on it.  
  
"Carrie always wanted a little brother anyway," Joss cut in, devoid now of any emotion besides ravenous hunger for the cheap plates. "Keith's boys only came over once for a visit -- none of 'em got along."  
  
"I _meant_ ... are you happy with your life?"  
  
She looked up at him, finally, a string of green beans poking inelegantly from her mouth, and let out an airy laugh from her nose.  
  
"What am I, dying?"  
  
His eyes roved, trying not to look too serious, and landed on the dusty blinds.  
  
"Well in this city, you can't push the idea away."  
  
"Keith's ... nice," she considered. "Rubs my feet, folds all the baby clothes, makes breakfast for Carrie when I don't wanna get up ..."  
  
The cringe in his heart was strong enough that it flitted across his face. He'd long ago gotten accustomed to (unwillingly or not) the fact that Joss would be bringing men around their daughter -- _his_ daughter. The stab of indignation was still there.  
  
"Oh, don't give me that look, Arthur," she chided. "You can bring whatever woman you like around your apartment, around our daughter -- it's not much of my business. Get a real Ozzie and Harriet going. Just don't let me find out the woman influencing our child is a little tramp."  
  
For a moment, a _strong_ moment, Arthur had the audacity to actually feel _bad_ that he was about to dump child support papers in her lap when she was so obviously, _visibly_ stressed out.  
  
A flash of Carrie's ear, mimicking his own Joss-inspired wound. Rose, beautiful Rose, resting on his chest to get her frilly little panties off, laughing in his face, her breath hot and strong with spearmint. He was not as sympathetic now.  
  
"How did you know I was with Rose?" he questioned for the first time, realizing the only way she could have predicted as such a half-hour earlier would have been to spy on him. _What the fuck --_  
  
"You have a giant hickey peeking out of your collar."  
  
A flush of tangible panic forced his eyes open, widening on Joss' soft laugh. She tried hard to keep it down, and shook her head as she stabbed another piece of overdone, rubbery meatloaf. A glossy pink smile brought a horrible technicolor to her face.  
  
Arthur ran for the bathroom.  
  
She was right. Fuck. _Fuck_. A golf ball of a red welt, jagged along his collarbone, peered teasingly over the edge of his shirt. Fortunately only a small part was visible, but _my god, I went to work like this, no wonder Randall was laughing so hard, oh my god, I walked Carrie to **school** like this yesterday._  
  
He wondered if Joss could hear him laughing, wailing from the bathroom. Muffling it with his jacket sleeve only did so much to help.  
  
 _ **Fuck,** Rose._  
  
He buttoned the top of his collar and zipped up his jacket, and tried hard not to look so terribly red with embarrassment as he walked back to their booth. _Ha._ Rose red.  
  
A quiet filled the space between them, carried to amiability by the orchestration of his pen on paper and the clatter of her fork against the plethora of dishes. Their eyes flitted to each other, pushing the limits of civility out of their own internal curiosity, before going back to their respective chores when they risked being caught by the other party.  
  
It depended on the day whether _I can't believe I married you_ was a compliment or an insult. Today it was anincredulous mixture.  
  
"Um ..." He looked up after some indefinite amount of time. Joss' eyes were scattering between the myriad of dishes, her mouth halfway open. "If -- when you tell Carrie about her friend, I -- I wanna be there, too."  
  
He didn't like that idea. Not only for the sake of not adding undue stress to her heavy form, but he wanted the affair to be as quick and painless for Carrie as he could make it, and Joss was so ... _dramatic,_ all the time.  
  
"What ... what about the -- the ..." He gestured to her stomach.  
  
"He can handle it," she dismissed. "It's a terrible thing and I need to be able to comfort my daughter."  
  
He didn't know whether to be relieved or agitated that of all the time in the world, she chose _now_ to step up to the plate.  
  
"We should go," she declared upon the arrival of the silver dollar pancakes. "I wanna see Carrie."  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
"I drove three hours to see my daughter, I'm _gonna_ see her and give her a kiss."  
  
Of all the things Arthur was sure of in the world, one concrete truth was his mother would bite his head off if he brought Joss back to the apartment. The kindness between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law extended only as far as the strange period of time of Joss being pregnant until she left Arthur and their three-year-old daughter without so much as a note.  
  
He began to pull out his wallet -- not that he had much money left, but he felt a need to leave a generous tip for the poor waitress handling Joss' ridiculous hormonal cravings.  
  
"I got the bill," she insisted, alternatively knitting her brows and scraping her mishmash of breakfast sausage and meatloaf into the Styrofoam container.  
  
"This is for the tip."  
  
"I got the tip, too."  
  
He closed his eyes, not wanting to argue.  
  
"Just let me get it."  
  
"Arthur, you don't have money."  
  
"I _do,"_ he stressed, pressing the coffee-stained $10 bill into the respective leather fold.  
  
"Arthur --"  
  
"Don't make a fuss, Jocelyn, for god's sake," he clipped. "Just let me get the tip."  
  
He swore -- he _swore_ as she heaved her way out of the booth, slinging her purse and the crinkly plastic bag in both hands, and he breezed past to open the door for her, he heard under her breath, purposefully derisive, "Last time you said that, I got pregnant."  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _Christmas of '65 saw angels walking among the doldrums who needed them in Gotham City.  
_  
 _Twenty-year-old Arthur Fleck, one of them, was sure of it.  
_  
 _If he had to attribute three words that made his head swim with Jocelyn Soucie, they, in no particular order of importance, would have to be: Oz, winter, and angels.  
_  
 _The first one was so wonderfully odd, so feminine for his liking. But Jocelyn -- "you can call me Jo or Joss if you want, Jocelyn sounds like an old woman" -- had insisted on bringing over a present on Christmas Eve, and, though his mother holed herself in that back bedroom with a derisive look at the young woman, Arthur worked up enough nerve to ask if Joss wanted to catch the latest showing of the Wizard of Oz playing on NCB. It had been just a week since their date at the deli. He was desperate to be near her.  
_  
 _When Dorothy Gale left her Kansas farm house to join their technicolor spectacle of life, Joss' hand slipped into his with the ease of floating through water. An enchanted gasp escaped her rosy lips, catching him off guard, but he made no comment on it. It was through no fault of his own -- only impulses -- that his thumb brushed over a tendon in her hand whenever she squeezed too tight. He would not bellyache of his good fortune if the only catch was his fingers turning red.  
_  
 _The walk to Joss' family home from his own was not dull in the slightest. Flakes of virgin snow danced wildly in her hair as she raved on and on. She chattered on about how much she enjoyed the film and how she very much hoped he liked the present she bought him -- a tin of shortbread cookies and a Beatles LP. Arthur smiled politely, too afraid of a laugh webbing into his speech, occasionally looking up to see her wipe away a stray tear. A thud of terror drilled into his heart as he remembered Wade Soucie's clear threats of bodily harm should Arthur ever leave his daughter in tears.  
_  
 _So as she leaned in for a playful peck on the cheek, right on that sweet dip just under his cheekbone, he wiped a residue tear smudge away.  
_  
 _He practically floated back to his mother's apartment, air light with the quivering energy to scream on a mountain about the **greatest god damn woman to ever set foot in Gotham fucking City.** Through his mother's crude shake of the head and mutterings about the 'hussy,' Arthur blushed as deep as the ruby slippers Joss seemed so infatuated with._  
  
 _Gene Kelly, eat your heart out._  
  
 _The best Christmas of his life in twenty years. Kicking his feet up on the wall of his small bedroom, brushing the snow from his tufts of curly hair, munching on days-old shortbread. Feelings of a smiling young woman and her high cheekbones and she kissed him, **she** wanted to kiss **him --**_  
  
 _Arthur Fleck was sure he had seen an angel._  
  
 _He fell asleep, tin canister on his stomach, listening to the LP repeat again and again **and again** until his mother had enough and came in to turn it off herself._  
  
 ** _Nowhere man, the world is at your command_**  
  
Arthur knew, gauging his mother's reaction to Joss stepping behind him into the living room, that the only thing keeping a yelling match at bay was Carrie sleeping on the couch.  
  
"Oh, my god, Arthur, look at her," Joss whispered, voice high with unconstrained amusement.  
  
He found it hard not to look.  
  
Carrie had found his childhood cowboy-print pajamas in place of her own satin pink set. Her little butt, patterned with stars and horses, was pressed against the armrest of the couch in a kneeling position, her hair and cheek matted into the cushion.  
  
Ignoring the scathing and miraculously silent look his mother shot the both of them, Arthur moved to collect Carrie into his arms. The elixir of life, that saccharine artificial sweetness, washed over him as a tiny fist curled into his jacket collar and she pushed her head into his neck like it belonged there.  
  
They retreated to the back bedroom, Carrie hissing and burrowing further into his jacket when the lights flicked on.  
  
"Carrie, baby?" Joss spoke with the same inflections as though Carrie was still an afterthought from within -- not a person at all but a _sensation,_ a little stranger of a baby cub curled up and hiccuping in the squishy womb when she heard her daddy's voice. "Carrie, it's Mommy. I got you pancakes. Can I hold you?"  
  
"Are you sure you can?" Arthur questioned. Partly he worried about the lack of responsibility to the kid he wasn't even growing, but also his little girl felt warm and good with her arms around his neck.  
  
"Arthur, I drove three hours -- let me hold my fucking baby."  
  
It was only Joss who could be so abrasive and so positively _beaming_ at the same time. She dipped slightly at the added weight of Carrie falling against her chest, but swooned as she ran her fingers through the strips of tangled, sweaty blonde hair. The girl's forehead became a canvas of sticky pink lemonade kisses.  
  
The sweetness burned into Arthur's heart like his pile of discarded cigarettes from the previous hours. Tentatively, he took a step forward, a hair's width away from sharing the very air with Joss, and folded Carrie's ear where Joss had tucked some strips of hair.  
  
Still yellow. Fading.  
  
He could only stay mad for so long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm REALLY agitated because I intended to get this chapter out on Halloween, or election day at the very latest, but my damn computer crashed and erased the entire story from my drive, and this chapter along with it. I've had the most intense writer's block from stress trying to recreate what I thought was a really good chapter here. I will try to be more consistent with updating, provided my laptop doesn't crap out on me.
> 
> BUT BAD ORANGE MAN GETTING EVICTED GAVE ME AN ENERGY BOOST TO WRITE, YAYYYY (I'm from the midwest, oof). It's been a stressful month in the US, y'all.
> 
> I really, really wanted to write a chapter of just Arthur and Jocelyn. Their dynamic together is one of my favorites to write about and I could spend hours talking over their mixed emotions as enemies, exes, parents, college sweethearts, etc. They bring out the best and worst behaviors in each other. Nobody else talking. Just the two of them.


	14. Confusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: mentions of child death, corporal punishment/child abuse.
> 
> Lots of weird sexual tension for poor Arthur. These women make his brain go brrrrr

There was a familiar rhythm to the build-up of telling his daughter that her classmate had died.  
  
 _Way_ too familiar.  
  
She was going to figure it out eventually. There were only so many times Carrie could see her parents behaving around each other, making her breakfast, letting her stay home from school before she familiarized the pattern with trepidation and anxiety. It didn't help that Joss' hormones made her _bawl her god damn eyes out._  
  
It got somewhat easier with each passing year. Desensitizing. That was a hard pill for Arthur to swallow.  
  
"Every god damn year," Joss clipped. "At the rate this is going, Carrie's gonna be the only kid alive in her graduating class."  
  
She'd hoisted herself to sit on the kitchen counter, yawning and stretching her body like a chubby house cat. Arthur didn't sleep much at all, too wrapped up in his own head, tightening around his brain like a rubber band about to snap. There was the itch of guilty consciousness for having skipped his social worker's appointment days earlier, and the jokes he wanted to write down but was in too much numbing pain in his fingers to pick up a pen. Then there was the over-familiar, stone-cold fear he had to endure every school year, every time the news came up, and so badly did he want to grab Carrie and run for the hills because _that could've been my kid who died._  
  
Then there was his ex-wife, sleeping in his bed, her arm draped over their child as though they were the chummiest pair on earth.  
  
The look his mom gave him when she passed through the living room that morning could have peeled paint.  
  
He knew it looked bad, the woman who broke her precious boy's heart and abandoned her own child for weeks, all of a sudden prancing (to a more realistic mind, shambling) around the kitchen of a tiny apartment that wasn't hers, simultaneously fretting and swaying to the Sinatra tunes on the little radio. She was even dressed in one of his sweaters, god forbid. He didn't want her to have to wake up sweat-stained in a button-up, but the thought of her in just a bra and shorts in his bed almost made him choke.  
  
"People need to take better care of their kids," Arthur grumbled, turning away so he didn't focus too long on her tanned thighs in yesterday evening's white cherry-patterned shorts.  
  
 _You're about to tell your daughter that her friend was killed and you're hard right now, you're fucking sick_  
  
"This is why I barely let her outside," he continued, pushing a container of mushy hash browns onto a plate.  
  
 _"Morning, Nana."_  
  
Two heads craned in the direction of the kitchen's entrance. Coming into view was a bushy-haired blonde, clad in baby-blue-hemmed cowboy pajamas that collected dirt at her feet where she dragged them along the floor. Ever the protector, she held Frankie in the crook of her elbow.  
  
Her eyes lit up.  
  
"Mom?"  
  
"Hi, baby," she smiled sadly, tiredly. It was only six-thirty. "Why are you up so early?"  
  
"Construction people outside," she yawned, pushing a fist into her eye, making it hard for them to avoid swooning.  
  
Arthur moved to lift Carrie by her underarms, sitting her on the rickety stool at the breakfast nook next to the oven. He had work in two hours and was impatient to rip the band-aid off.  
  
Carrie's attention shifted between the plate of hash browns and the syrupy waffle pushed in front of her, and her knotty-haired mother in clothing that didn't suggest modesty -- wait, that was _Daddy's grey sweater._ Her eyes shifted to her father, kneeling down in front of her, already dressed for the day and not exactly subtle in his display of discomfort, avoiding her gaze.  
  
She narrowed her eyes at the way he rubbed his hands together, visibly stressed.  
  
 _They definitely had sex_  
  
She stabbed into a bit of soggy, buttery waffle, not wishing to ruminate on the idea. At least her mom was already pregnant, she supposed.  
  
"Hey, Peanut," her father began, cupping her face in his warm hands in the way that tenderly demanded attention. "Your mom and I have something we need to talk to you about."  
  
"Sweetie, ah ..." Joss began, "... your friend Henry was hit by a car yesterday morning ... he passed away."  
  
 _Oh._  
  
Her head shifted down, pushing the pads of her father's fingers to rest on her neck, warming them even more in her tufts of hair.  
  
"I heard about that," she mentioned, looking up to reassure them. It was terrible -- _terrible_ \-- but it was yesterday's news.  
  
They looked concerned anyway, making her frown deepen.  
  
"Where did you hear that?" Arthur asked, pulling his hands back to rest on her jaw, thumb stroking the high of her cheek, on alert for tears. "Was Nana watching the news?"  
  
"No, it was on the radio when I was taking a bath last night."  
  
The balloon of anxiety inside his stomach punctured and aired itself out in a disgruntled sigh. Joss shot him a look he familiarized years ago -- _bang-up job, Fleck._ As though to mock him, the heels of her feet danced a rhythmic drum beat against the cabinet just below her, toes blue and daisy-spotted and _entirely_ too girlish.  
  
"If you have any questions, baby," she continued, settling her gaze respectfully in he lap, "you can ask us."  
  
In the thick silence of their kitchen, cut through by the distant whines of Lucille Ball up to no good as per his mother's living room ritual (it should be illegal to play something so loud and brash when the atmosphere is so horrible, he believed -- and at _six-thirty),_ Arthur stood, feeling his knees pop in shrieking discomfort.  
  
Carrie turned to him, eyes narrowed in instantly discernible worry. It brightened her eyes in the fluorescent light of the sink's overhead lamp. Just as he got semi-comfortable, just as he leaned against the utensil drawer --  
  
"Why is there a bruise on your neck? Did you get beat up again?"  
  
Joss laughing right in his face -- retribution for the horror that was their first near-kiss over a decade earlier, he supposed -- would have been better than the high squeaks that rocked her shoulders up and down, eyes screwed shut and hand over her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle her amused indignation.  
  
 _God,_ he wanted to knock her lights out sometimes.  
  
"It's a special bruise, baby," Joss laughed, letting her arm drop back into her lap.  
  
The tips of his ears burned. He tugged the holey collar of his night shirt further up on his collarbone, helping nothing, but giving him the false security blanket of privacy in his own skin.  
  
 _If Carrie saw your hickeys then Mom saw them, too. Good job, you stupid fuck, Jesus, no wonder she divorced you  
_  
 _ **Glad you find it fucking hilarious that I get laughed at, Jocelyn**  
_  
He shuffled away, feeling his brain shut down as his arms coiled around himself.  
  
"Artie ..." she drawled, stomping her little feet against the wooden floors in an obscene slap that sent his mind flying.  
  
In the door frame of the bathroom, just out of his mother's view (their daughter's head was just barely visible in the archway of the breakfast nook if Joss craned her neck to see), she pressed her hand on his shoulder, scorching a hole through his grey sweater.  
  
"I'm just having _fun,"_ she smiled, entirely too pleased and demented, younger than she'd been in years. "Carrie doesn't know any better."  
  
"Having fun," he growled, turning away from her, stepping into the realm of privacy in the bathroom. "Yeah, have fun answering Carrie's questions for the rest of the day."  
  
He winced when the door slammed, feeling the gust of furious wind blow his hair back.  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _ **My name is Arthur Felix Fleck. It is Wensday, Febuary 1, 1966. This is my first journal that my oral comm professer told me I should try out to not be as scared speaking in class. She said to write down any thing I felt or thought but I don't think I should do that all the time. I told her for the third time that my laugh is a condition but she didn't listen.**_  
 _ **Does anybody listen to me?**_  
 _ **As of this very minute (5:11 PM) I'm sitting in the college theater watching my girlfriend paint the set for the spring play, a really good one ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. She's the main villain, Nurse Rachet. I'm sitting in the back to not distract her but it's funny to me, she's too AMAZING to be a villain. I always say she looks like Lauren Bacall (the pretty blonde from all the Humphrey Bogart movies) but with better cheekbones. I don't know why she chose me when she could have deserves a guy like Humphrey Bogart.**_  
 _ **After set painting we're supposed to go to Amusement Mile, I want to make it a really good time for her, I saved up $15 from my job (I'm a print assosiate on weekends to help my mom and I work at a pharmase with my girl on Wensday and Monday mornings where I get my Librium, Tusdays and Thursdays I have classes from 1 to 5). I might want to kiss her on the feres wheel if that's not too clishe. I really don't want to fuck this up. My mom said she saw me practiseing dancing in my room the other night, really I was imagining waltzeng with my girlfriend.**_  
 _ **That's a nice word to say**_  
 _ **I'm not happy I don't think but I'm as broken as usual. I'm too scared to be happy but I'm resting.  
**_  
 _"Fuckin' assholes ... **let's go,** Art."  
_  
 _A smear of white paint was transferred discourteously to Arthur's shirt, hauling him out of his seat before he reconciled that Joss was approaching him at all. A dumb "huh?" squeaked out of his throat as he struggled to keep up with her determined pace, slamming the auditorium doors open.  
_  
 _He didn't like the shirt anyway.  
_  
 _"J -- Joss, I thought ... set building was until six?"  
_  
 _"It was, but they made me mad. I'm done with it today."  
_  
 _The air was so cold, a slap in the face in comparison to the thin veil of warmth of the heating units indoors. It wasn't much, but the outside was frigid, and Arthur was very sure the dribble of drool on his lip was going to freeze over and preserve the skin in a sheen of ice by the time they got to the station wagon.  
_  
 _Joss' arms rested against the driver's door, head bowed. She'd dyed it a brunette color for the play -- he hated it, but didn't say anything. It wasn't his place to say anything about it, but he missed the sight of sunflower locks webbing between his fingers when they could sneak in time for hugging.  
_  
 _He tried hard -- really hard to be polite and not notice the buds of her breasts standing to attention through her costume. She rested her arms against the frosty hood of the car.  
_  
 _"What ... what did th -- they say?"  
_  
 _"I shouldn't even say it to you."  
_  
 _Her head lifted, eyes turning heavenward. The sky was murky today, hazed with ashy snow clouds that only enforced the suffocating cheeriness of the red and pink splotches of decorations on the other campus buildings just yards ahead of her car.  
_  
 _She took a deep breath.  
_  
 _"They said we should have cast **you** in the role of Harding, since they think you're sexually inadequate like **he** is. They think you're afraid of girls because we haven't had sex."  
_  
 _She looked away from his eyes, those sweetly naive mossy rivers that at once seemed to threaten and adore, to the spray of moth-white she unintentionally marked on his big red flannel.  
_  
 _The shirt was unbecoming of him anyway. He needed to either fill out or find a new style -- something that was more Arthur Fleck and less her father. He was still resistant to eat, but not as much.  
_  
 _"We should go home and get you changed up," she sighed.  
_  
 _It warmed him that she had as of late started referring to his house as 'home.' Certainly his mother, loving as she was of him, kept her disapproval at the bare minimum, but it simmered under his skin like the stick-n-poke tattoo he got on his arm and prayed to high heaven he could keep out of her sight. Every "Good evening, Miss Fleck" may as well have been spoken to a deaf woman. Joss may have gotten a more vibrant response then.  
_  
 _And yet she still came. She massaged his shoulders with those golden hands after a late shift, only ever mentioning in passing "I think I need to feed you" when she could **definitely** feel the brittle bones beneath his shirt. She bounced around the dust piles in the kitchen and made him Campbell's soup like it was her duty to feed him.  
_  
 _She gave him a reason to clean his room. For that, his mom was begrudgingly thankful.  
_  
 _She could have a Humphrey Bogart, a real James Dean if she wanted, and she chose **his** comfort.  
_  
 _"Sexually inadequate," she muttered, forcing his attention back on her as she drove. "I'll show them sexually inadequate. Art, you're the first boy I've been steady with who hasn't tried to shove his tongue down my throat on the first date."  
_  
 _His journal opened, slowly. Hesitating, he corrected it._  
  
 ~~ _ **I might want to kiss her on the feres wheel if that's not too clishe**_~~  
  
A hand sat peculiarly on top of Arthur's head. He blew out an anxious breath, trying to focus solely on his work. Not the ambient noise of the Normals that isolated him in his little glass box. Not questioning (god, can my brain slow down for a minute?) if his mom had seen his hickey or what Joss' plan was with taking Carrie out of the house for the day.  
  
 _ **Please,** focus on work for once._  
  
It wasn't until it moved, ruffling the curls away from his porcelain makeup to let it dry, that he startled himself into remembering it was his own hand. Funny, his brain. Who else's hand could it have been?  
  
Just his luck. Just Joss' courtesy. A daub of oily concealer smeared on his thumb as he rolled the dirty plastic tube through his fingers. Testily, he tugged at his collar and swiped at the loud blemish on his collarbone. It was well below his skin tone -- something be didn't believe was possible -- but it would have to do. He tacked on what little there was left; it was down to the little wick now.  
  
He was so unbelievably stupid. Hickeys was just another title to add to the ever-expanding list of ways Arthur Fleck was a mindless fuck-up of a human being. The only person who would refute this statement was a child.  
  
A greasy tear smeared his makeup before he could even dip his brush in the melancholy blue.  
  
So badly did he want to run for the hills and come back in somebody else's skin.  
  
\- - - -  
  
It was hot out -- hot enough to most assuredly smear his meticulous red grin down the concave lines of his mouth. The ends of his cracked fingers stung from the hours of ukulele. He was hungry, and his throat rattled in irritation at the hours upon hours of humming and singing little ditties to entertain the passers by.  
  
He was also never so content at work. He loved Amusement Mile.  
  
The old Asian couple whose restaurant they'd been settled in front of came out periodically to supply him and Gary with more water. He had the easy job in this -- just sit and play his little ukulele for the kids who were either sick or playing hooky from school. Gary was the one who had to dance through it all, and his poor knees weren't what they used to be.  
  
They soldiered through it, grateful for the attention.  
  
A little boy ran up to them. In all his assignments here, Arthur familiarized himself with the owners' grandson. He was holding an orange balloon and grinning madly. A clouded rainbow sat, freshly painted, on the inner edges of the boy's eyebrows. _Ha. A unibow._  
  
"Sobo told me we had clowns at the shop today! I didn't believe her!"  
  
Arthur smirked, refraining the uke to give Gary a necessitated break.  
  
"Your sobo's a really nice lady. D'you wanna go in and tell her a joke?"  
  
A family careened around them in order to get to the shop's door, obviously disgruntled by the bulk of the park's population that made their walk more clustered and difficult. Arthur, tentatively pulling the boy closer and out of their reach, was cut off as he attempted to speak again.  
  
"Mr. Carnival, I don't know any jokes."  
  
"Jingles knows lots of jokes for you to tell. His brain is just _full_ of 'em." Dipping closer to the boy's ear, he added softly, "That's why his head is so big."  
  
A row of big jagged teeth presented itself in a bubbly smile. The swooning inside forced Arthur to smile back.  
  
 _I get to make kids laugh and play music to pay for my daughter's braces_  
  
"Jingles?"  
  
Gary turned to him, tired but smiling. A sharp sting of guilt weighed down the smile on Arthur's face as he watched a sheen of sweat bask in the sunlight on Gary's face. Even as they were working under the little shop's green awning, patches of light still nailed Gary (and the tip of Arthur's oversized shoe) right in his face.  
  
Gary walked to them anyway, grateful for the excuse to converse.  
  
"Yes, Carnival?"  
  
"The boy needs a joke to tell to his grandma; I told him you're the best at joke-telling."  
  
Arthur allowed his shoulders to relax as he handed the entertainment reigns to Gary, quietly thankful that the boy seemed unbothered by Gary's stature. Arthur was still terribly apologetic for the incredulous stares Gary received on a few occasions from Carrie.  
  
Unlike her mother, and her innate _refusal_ to understand disabilities, Carrie seemed to have an _inability_ to understand. No matter how many genetic talks they had. Thinking about the very real possibility of Carrie _genetically_ being handed his disabilities -- his generalized anxiety, his manic depression, his maladaptive daydreaming ... he was going to have a lot to answer for when Carrie hit her teens.  
  
His fingers thrummed the ukulele aimlessly, feeling less comfortable in its numbness now and more sting that he believed was symbolic, although he was too harried to question it.  
  
"You see Mr. Carnival there?" Gary's voice threw him back to earth, as heavy as a sack of bricks. He was talking to the boy, still standing between them, his attention alternating. "If I was to give _Mrs._ Carnival a rose, would that make me a romantic jester?"  
  
Arthur couldn't help but smirk. After a moment of hesitation, the boy burst out into a shrieking laugh that trailed behind an _"Oh"_ of realization.  
  
Mrs. Carnival most certainly would _not_ think such an act was funny.  
  
"Another one!" the boy insisted, brightening with amusement.  
  
"Alright, another one, let's see," Gary contemplated. Arthur watched a bead of white paint drip down his temple from the sheen of sweat on his head. "Well, I do know a lot of jokes about people without jobs, but none of them really work."  
  
Two shrieking cackles later, and the boy was gone, leaving a tinkering overhead bell in his wake.  
  
"Thanks for gettin' me outta the sun, mate."  
  
Almost as though scripted, a novelty set of handkerchiefs was pulled from within Arthur's sleeve, allowing Gary to blot the sweat from his brows as best he could without ruining his makeup.  
  
"Better you than me," Arthur commented. "One of my meds has been giving me heat flashes. I gotta figure out which one it is."  
  
"I want you to be careful with that stuff, Arthur. This summer's not going to be kind to us, what with the garbage strike goin' on, pollutin' everything. Hoyt an' the company, and _especially_ you an' Carrie can't afford your heart givin' out in the heat."  
  
"I know, Gary," he mused.  
  
The myriad of neon colors walking by without a glance in their direction, the sound of flopping sandals and screaming, happy kids tossed through the air on those mechanical swings just fifty paces away ... sometimes if Arthur put his mind to work, he could imagine bringing Carrie to Disneyland.  
  
He was sure she would love it. Those ridiculously overpriced Mickey Mouse ears, a smile smeared with chocolate and absolutely wired on soda, standing with Goofy or Donald Duck and _Daddy, I really am glad you took us to California instead of boring old Denver._  
  
Joss had mentioned once or twice wanting to plan a week-long trip to Disney _World_ for Carrie's 13th birthday and Mother's Day, since it was closer and more cost-effective. Whether or not he could stomach a whole week staying in a hotel room on her dollar remained to be seen. He could only wonder if she really thought she'd like him any better in Disneyland than in Gotham.  
  
 _"Hey, boys!"_  
  
The familiarity rattled Arthur's very bones almost out of his skin. Sitting bolt upright, his eyes locked on a group of girls -- a trio of skimpy, bright tank tops and denim shorts. Each of them held glasses of some sugary pink drink that gave him heart disease just looking at.  
  
Red hair peeked out from under a bubblegum pink baseball cap, which upon further inspection (provided by her moving to tower over his numb sitting position), had the Gotham Knights baseball team logo sewn on it. A ballerina, right-side-up, stretched her leg to him in inked mockery.  
  
"I could pick _those_ eyes out of a crowd," she leered, unashamed and smiling. "Hey there, _sweetie."_  
  
He barely caught that she was talking at all. Through the blood rushing in tsunami-like roars in his ears, he heard Rose's two friends behind them making lewd comments to Gary, but they sounded suppressed, as though a pillow was held over their faces. From Gary's face, he didn't seem to mind very much.  
  
The smell of sugary alcohol and Rose's warm thighs flushed Arthur's face to an alabaster white, even beneath his makeup. The park seemed to have dropped ten degrees as blood zigzagged to his groin.  
  
"You gonna get up and play a song for me to dance to?" Rose egged. _Please, god, not now_. "I know those are good hands."  
  
 _Fuck._  
  
"Lily!" she exclaimed, turning over her shoulder to her two cronies. A thick lock of red hair spilled out from her cap. "You wanna get a picture of me with Mr. Clown?"  
  
Unceremoniously, a hefty weight was saddled in his lap. Thank god for his oversized getup. The gleam of intermingled sweat and whiffs of vanilla perfume slipping in through his clown nose had him as hard and shameful as burning charcoal.  
  
Cautiously he rested his hand on her side, the other one wrapped tightly -- almost protectively around the neck of his green ukulele. _You're at work, you animal, get her off before someone reports you_  
  
She pressed a teasing kiss to Arthur's cheek as the camera shuddered, rendering him defenseless. Gary smiled at him apologetically. The protective layer of makeup smudged on the hard metal sticking out of her bottom lip. He may have smiled. His brain was running too fast to remember.  
  
"I wanna know if that look goes home with you," she mocked. The warmth of her breath clung to his cheek. He wouldn't be shocked if all the pain melted off right then and there. "Let me know how much you don't like me messin' with your work."  
  
One of her legs crossed over the other, and to Arthur's horrorstruck mind, he knew she felt his half-hard rod poking against the underside of her thigh. The drink was set on the ground. A pink card -- it looked like a business card -- was pushed into his mustard-yellow vest. It was warm from its place in her back pocket.  
  
An atom bomb of noise startled him to extreme alertness when the overhead bell on the door next to him swung open. All at once, Rose was regrouped with her friends, looking dour, even with her pink drink.  
  
 _"Hey, I told you before, girls! You can't be bothering my customers!"_ The boy's sobo, Mrs. Shima, pointed a bony, manicured finger away from the shop. The areas of her crinkled face that weren't tanned were splotched red from frustration. Arthur sat dumbly, feeling somewhat like a naughty boy in school.  
  
"We are paying customers, lady!" Rose exclaimed. Gary moved to Arthur's side. "We put down our forty bucks to get in the park!"  
  
"I don't care -- I got my grandson inside and these men have jobs to do! You can't be bothering them, go!"  
  
Bratty and confounding, Rose cast a lingering glare as she turned her body to leave. A final glance was thrown to Arthur, still watching her, unsure of what else he was supposed to do. She and her friends sashayed in the direction of the attractions, reminding Arthur and his groin of her guiding him through a night brothel.  
  
 _"Fucking kids,"_ Mrs. Shima grumbled. "If they start bothering you again, come in and we'll call the police."  
  
Arthur may have made some noise of acknowledgement. When the door closed, Gary turned to him.  
  
"You okay, Arthur? Well that was fun, wasn't it?"  
  
" ... I ..." Words were beyond him. A tight chuckle pulled at his vocal cords. "... I don't know."  
  
\- - - -  
  
So her name was Rose Quinnlann. At least on the card.  
  
And she lived on Chester Boulevard, just four blocks away from Anderson Avenue.  
  
Arthur triple-checked that the card was securely in his front pocket before he left for work that evening. Even if Gary wasn't prone to snitching on him the way the others may have been, and there was no real way to trace the card back to him, somehow Hoyt would find its roots eventually and dock him and Gary for fraternizing with hookers on the job. Whether or not she approached him and pinned him underneath her on the crate was irrelevant.  
  
Rose and Jocelyn never listened to him, so why should his grumpy boss?  
  
Blue hues shrouded the inside of the apartment, save for the single overhead light of the front hallway. It was quiet.  
  
 _"Happy, did you check the mail?"_  
  
As quiet as the world allotted to people like him.  
  
"Yeah, Mom. Just school stuff."  
  
The ache in his shoulder was receding when he lifted his arm to swipe his hair back. Its week-old adornment of discolored bruises had to have been healing. He found his mom in the kitchen, padding around for a fish-n-chips TV dinner she had stuffed in the toaster oven.  
  
"Where's Carrie?" he asked dully, perusing the report card. She'd bumped her math grade from an F to a bare minimum D.  
  
"With her mother, I think."  
  
He supposed that was good. It would've been a little more alleviating to have been told where his child was going on his time, but he could only pick and argue so much when Joss was giving Carrie attention of her own volition.  
"I don't think she should have Carrie when it's not her time," his mother piped in.  
  
"Well she's _her_ daughter, too, Mom. I can't just _not_ let her see her daughter," he said quietly, unable to concede fully to one side of the argument or the other. Certainly in the beginning, Joss had no problem not letting _Arthur_ see Carrie when it wasn't his week, but such callousness may not look good on his part if he really was thinking about acquiring child support.  
  
"Do you think I should write a new letter to Thomas Wayne?" she asked. Flopping the papers down on the counter, he smirked.  
  
"I think you need to eat," he replied. "It's getting late. You still need a bath."  
  
 _"You_ need to eat. You're so skinny."  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _"How do you walk up so many steps, Carrie?"  
_  
 _"I'm just used to them, Mom."  
_  
 _"Jesus, it's so many steps."  
_  
 _ **BZZZZZ  
**_  
Fucking _finally._  
  
With a begrudging glance to the clock -- 9:30 PM -- Arthur rushed to the front door to undo the locks. He barely got the door halfway open when he was ambushed with a joyous call of _"Daddy!"_ and arms thrown around his waist. A pointed chin found refuge on his lower rib as he alternated his attention between her and Joss, who looked ... _melancholy._  
  
"Mom and I went to a spa today," Carrie rattled on. "They put that funny green stuff on our faces, and then the cucumbers on our eyes."  
  
"Peanut, why don't you get ready for bed and you can tell me when I tuck you in?" he asked, brushing a hand distractedly through her hair.  
  
"Can I have a shortbread before I brush my teeth?"  
  
"One. And ask Nana first," Arthur responded, relieved at the pressure evading his ribs as she pried herself away. "But if she's asleep, don't wake her up."  
  
The little blonde barrier between them scurried out of view and around the corner. For a moment, Arthur and Jocelyn's gazes ran parallel, trying to gague the other's mixed thoughts.  
  
"You wanna come in?"  
  
Nodding tightly, Joss slid through the small gap between him and the door, moving to the living room. When he followed after her, door locked, she was sitting on the pillow he'd intended to sleep on. A perverse warm feeling in his chest made something tighten in his slacks that forced him to sit in his mother's chair. Joss' eyes were trained on the TV as she swiped a bit of blonde hair behind her ear.  
  
 _Grab her and kiss her or slap her, get her out of here, you're desperate and gross and your daughter's gonna walk in and see you have a hard-on, disgusting, disgusting, disgust --_  
  
"I, um ..." She cleared her throat. He winced at the scratchiness so vivid to his ears, he could feel it in his own throat. "Carrie looks happy here."  
  
His eyes roved. Was he supposed to rebuke such a statement for false modesty?  
  
"I mean ... I would hope so," he said instead, deciding it was the best choice of words to stave off any snide remarks. "I try."  
  
Looking geared up to speak again, Joss' attention was stolen away from the subject at hand, to the scuffling of little feet against the floor. In his old pajamas once again, Carrie rushed from behind his chair, warning them only with the creaking of her bedroom door.  
  
"Baby, don't run, okay?" Joss chided gently. "I'm sure people are trying to sleep."  
  
"People never sleep here, Mom," she said in good nature, tossing a wily grin in her pursuit of the kitchen. "You should hear the room upstairs!"  
  
"What's wrong with the upstairs?" Joss asked tightly, casting Arthur a glance that ground the exhaustion deeper into his bones. He crossed his arms and leaned back.  
  
"Nothing she's not heard from you."  
  
Her pencil-brows rose in surprise. Crossing her arms to match his, she allowed herself to sink into the couch. He turned his head before the question fully pervaded his head of how much his pillow would smell warm and sweet and wet, g _od dammit you're a stupid horny disgusting dog --_  
  
"Carrie, gimme a hug, baby," Joss requested, already extending her arms out in the courtesy. Appearing from the kitchen, Carrie padded over to lean into the embrace. Had Arthur not known them better, he wouldn't have noticed the lack of palpable emotion in his daughter's eyes, as though she was being hugged by a seasonal aunt. Joss' own warmth was there, tangible, if only for a few visibly strong seconds, as her hand stroked the high of the girl's back, just under her hairline.  
  
Tilting her head, Arthur heard Carrie's mumble, but it was indecipherable. It made him satisfied to watch them in the rare moments of girl bonding that boys were _strictly_ not to be clued in on.  
  
Joss' hand reached down to trace a finger on the black fabric of her shirt, at the level of her belly button.  
  
"The baby's head is right about here," she explained, poking a finger gently into the squishy flesh. "He's been kicking away at my back like you used to do."  
  
"I kicked you in your back?" Carrie asked. Pressing three digits to the center of attention on her mother's stomach, she added, "Oh, I'm sorry."  
  
Arthur laughed, unwillingly pushing his presence to the forefront of their minds, no more married into the background than the sirens blaring in from a few streets away. ** _I'm sorry, Mommy, for kicking you so hard in the ribs that my gigantic head broke your water at 3 AM._**  
  
Joss lingered on Carrie, caressing her soft, round face. Arthur wished he could hone in on the thoughts idling through her head, but the invasion of privacy eluded him when they signed off on the divorce.  
  
 _This is your pregnant ex-wife and your child, stop being so fucking apeish and thinking like you wanna fuck her --_  
  
"You smell like cherries," Joss commented, bringing Carrie close for a kiss to her more normal-sized crown of yellow hair. "My cherry girl. I love you."  
  
"I love you, too, Mom."  
  
Cherries and peanuts. He tried to imagine the combination of tastes and found it dissatisfying.  
  
Just as she moved to peruse past him, Arthur, sharp-eyed as he was, pounced on Carrie's right hand.  
  
 _"Hey,"_ he said sternly, grabbing the offending extra from her hand. "I said _one._ And then go brush your teeth, Peanut."  
  
She balked at him, at his sternness, before quickly recovering and fixing him with a half-hearted scowl. _Look how cute I am with your eyes and pajamas and my shiny blonde hair and orange nail polish, you can't be mad at me when I'm so adorable._  
  
His eyes softened, watching her slow as molasses pace as she contemplated, and then acted on hiking against the armrest to push a babyish, crumb-patterned kiss to his cheek. Disgusting as it was, he smiled anyway. In the back of his mind, something nagged at him. A wet, alcohol kiss on dried greasepaint.  
  
Over her shoulder, he saw Joss watching them, dancing that fine line permanently etched into her outward psyche of love and hurt. It overwhelmed her so much from the inside that her capacity for handling it eroded over into her eyes.  
  
Sometimes he wondered if she resented how much she loved her daughter, and that it left her so open to emotional vulnerability. They loved her without choice.  
  
Carrie careened around the chair to run and flick the bathroom light on, shutting them out to her privacy when she closed the door. Whatever conversation he wanted to attention to was stomped out of his mind as the lingering image of his little daughter inelegantly sashaying to the bathroom and the low hum of some old, vanilla western buzzed through the TV.  
  
"Cute kid we made," he said, unable to land on anything else.  
  
"Mm-hmm," Joss agreed. When he turned, her eyes were evidently trailed on their daughter's walk as well. More hollow, but soft. Dream-like.  
  
He would have to tell her about his need for child support at some point or another. He'd intended to bring it up at dinner, but got sidetracked in his own fervent emotional whirlwind. Joss often liked to do that.  
  
"I told Carrie more about what happened to her friend," Joss said abruptly. Her eyes went heavy-lidded, looking very determined to keep her face as hard-edged as was possible in her overly-emotional state. "She doesn't wanna go to his funeral."  
  
The first thought to register as something _relevant_ was a boy in a casket. Impossibly small (they really shouldn't have to make them that size), his neck mangled, his little suit lopsided and awkwardly protruding where his ribs were indelibly cracked like Thanksgiving wishbones. The news cycles in Gotham were so _fucking **invasive.**_  
  
Grimacing, pushing away that selfish relief in every parent's mind because _thank **god** that wasn't my kid_ and _thank god she doesn't wanna go,_ Arthur's eyes shifted rapidly between Joss' face and her stomach. Joss' glassy blue eyes. The curvature of her stomach, indecipherable in his living room and her black shirt but unquestionably _there._  
  
"You should've left that to me," he said finally.  
  
"I have to be a mom _sometimes,"_ she said, breaking it off with a high crack that hurt him to hear more than he believed it would.  
  
"You're pregnant," he said plainly, feeling and sounding stupid. _As if she didn't know._ "Isn't all the stress what made you so sick when you were growing Carrie?"  
  
He wished he could forget, or that time could ease the burn scar of guilt that reminded him, time and again, that the disastrous end of his wife's pregnancy with their daughter was _his fault._ That if she'd had a miscarriage or if the baby had come out not breathing, it would've been the sight of her husband strapped to a hospital bed, delirious and thrashing and pumped up with pain meds that would've done her in.  
  
"I think she's afraid of making friends because this keeps happening."  
  
She was deflecting, shifting her posture to put one leg over the other. Her thighs had taken a few years to get back down to size after Carrie. Her hips were just a bad deal. He understood the deflection. It was unspoken punishment, like he was a bad dog: she got to choose when it was brought into debate.  
  
"Carrie needs _friends,"_ she stressed, nodding her head for theatrical emphasis. "I mean ... she has a few that come over to my house, but I'm scared for her."  
  
He couldn't argue against that. _'She has me'_ was a futile assessment that had the potential to open a can of arguing that would shake the whole apartment. Carrie talked about having some friends at school, but never close enough that he had to bother with putting a name to a face. Each birthday party or school function brought a new wave of kids that he'd have to familiarize only for that short window of the evening. Part of it, he'd come to terms with long ago, was the other parents not fully trusting him nor the area of the city he lived in. It didn't matter how many parent-teacher meetings he attended on Joss' behalf that should've certified him as an attentive, _all-there, grade-A **parent.**_  
  
Being a daddy's girl couldn't be beautiful if it means she was isolating herself from her friends.  
  
"I'll talk to her," he said finally.  
  
"That poor boy's family," Joss mused, and Arthur fought hard to suppress a scoff. The news cycle had been going at it 24/7. The grandfather was evidently unashamed to admit to the reporters that he used the belt on his grandson regularly, and that he had sole custody of the boy since his parents dabbled into the more hardcore drugs.  
  
Even Arthur had his mother growing up. At arm's length, but dammit, she was _there. She_ never beat him with a belt. It was the same basic principle he took with him through the hospital doors when he brought Carrie home for the first time in her ugly circus-print car seat: _don't approach her when you're angry unless by means to keep safe._  
  
Fuck that grandfather. Arthur had half a mind to punch him if he saw the guy.  
  
"Maybe being in theatre next year might help," Arthur added quietly, unsure of himself. It hadn't helped the past few times. One would think being in the chorus would force her to be social.  
  
"I told her that we'd help her make a pink witch costume when I get back to town," Joss said, looking down at her palms.  
  
"We as in, you and ...?"  
  
"As in me and you," she finished. "She doesn't want Keith's help and I think it might be good for us to ... _coordinate_ more for events, to help her."  
  
Coordinate. He nodded softly in agreement.  
  
"She seems to not like Keith."  
  
He could only imagine why. He bit his lip to keep from shooting off at the mouth. _All she knows of him is that he has sex with her mother, what do you honestly expect, Jocelyn?_  
  
"She needs to give him a chance," she went on. "He bought her a huge slice of Oreo cheesecake when we went out for her birthday, even though I didn't really approve of that sugary shit being stuffed down her throat, and a box of chocolate truffles, which I found uneaten in the trash after one bite."  
  
"She probably thinks he's going to leave like the last couple of guys have. She needs some routine, Joss -- structure."  
  
"She _has_ structure, Arthur."  
  
"Taking her out for nine hours after telling her you'll be gone for two weeks is not _structure!"_ he exclaimed.  
  
"I got her missing work from the school!" she retorted, eyes ablaze. "Arthur, I will see my daughter if I want to see my daughter."  
  
"Calling at one in the morning after three days of icing her out isn't structure either," he grimaced, shaking his head. "You're bringing these men in and out of her life like they're _serving dishes."_  
  
"A hooker is a much better substitute," she sneered. His eyes widened.  
  
"I have _not_ brought her around Carrie or this place," he gritted, feeling his neck grow hot and tinted. Taking a deep breath to steady a laugh down in his chest, he swiped his thumb and forefinger over his eyes, connecting at the bridge of his nose. "I would like to ... to ... _coordinate_ better, to give Carrie some better structure on important days. I think that would be better for us, too. And I mean the three of us as a family."  
  
"Such as?"  
  
He lifted his head.  
  
"I want us to spend a joint Christmas together -- no more of the 'dad on Christmas Eve and morning, mom in the evening' shit."  
  
"Well how am I supposed to organize that?" Joss asked, tossing her hands up in weak protest. "I can't bring you _and_ Keith to my parents' house for Christmas dinner, and I really doubt your mom would want me at mass. That is Carrie's structure -- she doesn't need another lifestyle change so soon."  
  
"We'll talk about it. And I want her birthdays to be us three."  
  
"Arthur," she started, throwing a good-humored smile that got lost in the distance between them. "Name _one_ birthday where she has not spent the whole day with you."  
  
"Us _three,"_ he repeated. "Not two, or four, or five ... or ... six, I guess. _We_ are her parents. Acknowledge that you're her mom when it's her birthday, at _least,_ and make an effort to spend some time with us. Plan a party with me or let's go out to a dinner she likes --"  
  
"Carrie likes her birthdays with you."  
  
"-- Or you're fucked the next time her birthday lands on Mother's Day and she won't want to call you."  
  
"... No Keith?"  
  
"No Keith, or my mom, or baby if it's avoidable."  
  
"Well ... like it or not, he's here to stay. I can make an effort and talk about it but no promises," she said, gesturing to the broadening of her stomach. His brows rose in unwilling acknowledgement. Not the good kind of acknowledgement, but like he knew it was medication time at the psych ward, or a kid getting a mandated shot at the doctor's office.  
  
Just because it was true and demanded attention didn't mean it was _fun._  
  
"You still think it's a boy? Or have you changed your mind?"  
  
"I still think it's a boy. Everyone's placing bets. Carrie and my dad and Keith's dad are all thinking it's a girl. Me and Keith's little boys and our moms are saying it's a boy."  
  
"You still thinking about Christopher for a boy's name?"  
  
"Not as much," she said, and a mammoth weight lifted from his shoulders, surprising him. "Julien James is growing on me. John Lennon's first son is named Julian, remember?"  
  
"Does your dad hate Keith yet the same way he hated me?"  
  
"My dad did not _hate_ you," she drawled. "... But he did give Keith a watered-down lecture similar to what he gave you when you met. I'm not nineteen anymore. I have a kid already. He softened a little with you when we had Carrie."  
  
Arthur shrugged, not recalling many fond memories of his ex-father-in-law predating or succeeding the birth of his first grandchild. The similar reciprocated feelings between his mother and his new wife were put on the most temporary hold for five semi-mannerly years, from the announcement of Carrie's whirlwind arrival.  
  
"I'm sure you'll be the same way when Carrie brings her first boyfriend home," she continued. "I know you weren't my first boyfriend, but you were a first for a lot of things."  
  
Arthur closed his eyes, not wanting to ruminate or dwell on the idea. He had at least six more years before he had to worry about such gut-twisting bullshit.  
  
"Your dad called me a pill-head," he mused, raising a brow of intrusive familiarity. It stung as much in the present as it did thirteen years earlier.  
  
"Yeah, I admittedly didn't go the best route to tell him about you taking the ..."  
  
The one time Arthur was grateful for the incessant creak of the bathroom door. Their heads turned instinctively to see Carrie padding toward them, now clutching her faithful rabbit companion.  
  
"I forgot I left Frankie in the bathroom this morning," she mentioned. "I don't think he liked that."  
  
In a rare display, both he and Joss laughed quietly, trying to be mindful of the late hour and his sleeping mother just a wall away.  
  
"You brush your teeth, Carrie?" he asked. "C'mon, lion teeth."  
  
Pressing his fingers to her neck, he tugged the corners of her lips up with his thumbs, baring her top teeth to him. Her nose scrunched at the pressure in her cracking bottom lip. Mentally he made a note to add chap-stick to the next grocery list.  
  
"All brushed -- go lay down and pick out a book for us," he said, releasing her from his gentle grasp.  
  
"Night, Mom," Carrie said quickly, scurrying away with a wave and the gentlest peck on the cheek, her limber leg bending and stretching back, like ... like ...  
  
Like a ballerina.  
  
"Night, baby," Joss said back, attempting to cling. She allowed Carrie's hand to slip free of her frail, lingering grip as the girl turned and skipped to the bedroom, closing the door on them for what she deemed courtesy's sake.  
  
There was familiarity in Joss' expression. One which marked only the truly most astonished of occasions. He knew it very well, up close and personal. The upturn of glossed lips that threatened a reveal of white buck teeth, the slight crinkling of one eye to appear smaller than the other as a dimple left a concave dip in one apple-tinted cheek, the spangle of light that blotted her round nose ... it had embroidered into his mind every single time. A movie theater date. _I think you look like a Joss more than a Jocelyn. I think you're really pretty, Joss._ The seal of approval from her mother when she brought him to meet the folks. Stepping out from behind a velvet theatre curtain to a presentation of pink snapdragons for the leading lady. A wedding night in a ratty apartment -- her first night as Mrs. Arthur Fleck, dancing to Bing Crosby in the living room and baking peanut butter cookies before being physically carried off to her springy bridal bed, the growl of tearful "I love you's" and "I feel real" imprinting red and deep into the skin of her collarbone.  
  
Joss stared at the bedroom door behind his chair. Regardless of her inexpressible gracelessness, she was a woman in love.  
  
Clearing her throat of the professional slight, Joss looked back down at her lap, at her terrible interesting thumbs engaged in a petty war, and said, "My dad did say, when ... when we were divorcing ... that I couldn't have chosen a better father for my daughter."  
  
He scoffed to himself, turning his attention momentarily to the television. A cupcake-liner infomercial. The stations were getting desperate these days. His elbow shifted to lean his body against the left armrest.  
  
"You give compliments like your dad," he teased.  
  
"I'm gonna _ignore_ that, for your sake," she said peevishly, and he could _see_ the raising of her brows without even having to look. "I would like to have lunch with you when I get back from Albany."  
  
He looked at her again.  
  
"Keith would like to come, too, but ... he said if you want it to just be me and you, he'd be ... okay with that."  
  
"Depends on whose turn it is with Carrie," he shrugged, not wholly opposed to either option. He didn't _want_ to sit down and have lunch with the man who was fucking his ex-wife, but he _did_ want to sit down and talk to the man spending so much time with his daughter. "And whether or not you're going to her concert."  
  
"She kind of backed me into a corner with it at the spa," Joss winced, clearly not content to the idea in its entirety. Past experience won out over the pride of watching her daughter perform. "I'll go."  
  
"Good," he smiled. "Two days on the good mom board. Keep it up and you'll get a gold star."  
  
 _"Fuck you,"_ she scoffed.  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _"We could go to the fun house," Joss suggested. A tuft of candy fluff betwixt dainty fingers was shredded with the ease of mist as she popped a piece into her mouth.  
_  
 _Arthur rested his head on his hand, allowing his fingers to scruff the hair he'd meticulously slicked back before they set out. In his horror, clinging just to the first layer of skin like a layer of dirt really dug deep, he wasn't sure he could even stomach the dime-sized piece she was offering. Though her eyes held no ill-will, he couldn't believe -- he could not fucking believe he'd blown it so badly.  
_  
 _"I mean, can you really help your condition, Art?" she asked, good natured and seemingly already forgotten. The neglected piece of fluff went into her mouth as well. Her mouth, her gleaming, pink, plump lips that he'd ...  
_  
 _"No, I -- I **can't** help it ..." he muttered, so badly wishing the twisting red bar stool under him would just fall into the earth and let him be swallowed into the gaping maw.  
_  
 _ **"Oh!"** she exclaimed, eyes alight, grabbing his sleeve. "We could go down one of those big slides, one of us could. And the other could be waitin' down at the bottom and say, you pull me up by the arms and sweep me off my feet. Kiss me that way."  
_  
 _He stared off guiltily. One half of his face, from her vantage point, was soaked in the light of the candy boutique's freakishly orange, iridescent glow. The other half was fading into the shadow of the early dusk, rising to color only when the metrical whirring of the pendulum reared its head above the other little restaurant roofs, splashing him in violent neons.  
_  
 _"What about the tilt a whirl?" she suggested. A thumb stroked into the cardigan, hard enough for him to feel it in his wrist tendon. "When it goes so fast, my body's against yours, you might have no choice but to kiss me."  
_  
 _"I ... wanted it to be romantic for you," he stressed, not for the first time in the past hour. "I wanted it to be the Ferris wheel and just the right moment and ... **slow,** and you look so pretty and I loved the view and ... I fucking laughed in your face. **God."  
**_  
 _ **"Arthur,"** she laughed, embarrassing him with the rare use of his given name. Such formalities made them sound like old people. "I'm still having a good time. I forget about it 'til you bring it up again. Am I supposed to confess here that I'm just in it for the funnel cake and the free roller coasters?"  
_  
 _He didn't answer, didn't look at her. Still doused in color, he looked like the textbook expression of misery.  
_  
 _Sighing, Joss stood up from their place at the boutique. An impish grin tilted the corners of her lips until her cheekbones gained some excellent weight.  
_  
 _She leaned in. Hands on either side of his frigid, sunken face, she pecked Arthur right on the mouth. Innocent in her manipulations, but long enough to catch him off guard and ensure a whine as the daub of peppermint chap-stick flared his taste buds.  
_  
 _Inelegantly and deliberately, her scrunched nose nuzzled his, leaving his mouth gaping. She laughed. She knew it tasted like cotton candy and Christmas mints.  
_  
 _"Follow me if you want to," she said, finally releasing him, already sashaying away. "Or walk home if you don't want to. **I'm** going to have a good rest of the night on the tilt a whirl."  
_  
 _Turning around, she could practically hear his feet sliding and skidding against the wooden planks to keep up with her leisurely pace._  
  
When Arthur was left to himself after one of Joss' late night calls, pen to paper seemed to move like water on glass. Five in the morning, well after the two other occupants were seized in sleep, Arthur moved the cylindrical cartridge from one side of his mouth to the other, sucking down the rough comfort of smoke scratching at his vocals.  
  
He hadn't risked turning the knobs of the TV for fear of waking his mother. By one in the morning, the station had crackled into sporadic patterns of static, silently screaming for his attention. Idly he traced the jumping patterns into a page of his therapy journal.  
  
Right next to it, naked in its emotional vulnerability and its ability to be scrutinized by childish eyes if he wasn't careful to hide it away before the morning cartoons and breakfast started, one positive emotion had surfaced after his ex-wife's departure.  
  
 _ **Mr. Arthur Fleck and Mrs. Jocelyn Fleck live WITH PLEASURE in Anaheim, California, EIGHTEEN YEARS MARRIED! They have two great kids, Carrie Frances Fleck, 13 years old (13, wow, I still can't believe it), and Christopher Howard Fleck, 4 years old. Carrie and Christopher are both blonde like their mom and have her button nose but Carrie's hair is straight and Christopher's is curly like his dad's. Christopher has Arthur's green eyes and both kids have his ears and jaw.**_  
 _ **The latest FAMILY PHOTO is at Disneyland, in front of Cinderella's Castle. Carrie has on a big white Dumbo shirt and those expensive Mickey Mouse ears (which Arthur CAN AFFORD! becuse he's hit it big as a comedian where peopol UNDERSTAND IT!) She's laughing because Tinker Bell is taking the picture. She is too big for them to Carry anymore (do you get the joke? Funny?) but Arthur has a hand on her shoulder and Joss is Carrieing Christopher on her hip. She's kissing her husband on the cheek and he looks ~~very happy~~ relieved to be alive.**_  
 _ **It's May 13, 1986, Carrie's 13th birth day. Later the family will have dinner and a big birth day cake at the Carnation Ice Cream Parlor. Carrie can tell that her parents love each other a lot. They love their kids, TOO.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter may not seem like much (besides a camera in which to see Arthur's internal monologue regarding the girls in his life), but there is one very minor detail in this chapter that will be addressed as a major point later on. Have fun guessing :)
> 
> Three guesses who Rose Quinnlann is (that is NOT the detail, I swear to high Christ)
> 
> 'Sobo' is grandmother in Japanese
> 
> Arthur canonically has no middle name (at least not that we know of) but I have a few points  
> \-- I wanted there to be the connection of Arthur and Carrie both having the F middle initial  
> \-- Felix literally means "happy" and I almost went feral finding that out when researching middle names. Poor Arthur  
> \-- Arthur's middle initial makes his initials A. F. Fleck ... like Affleck ... like Ben Affleck


	15. Only

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: vague allusions to suicide attempt and aftermath

"What do we say?"  
  
"... M'sorry."  
  
Carrie's bashful, lopsided grin told him otherwise. Her eyes darted sluggishly between Gigi, just over the threshold of her home, to the cracked linoleum tiles, to the smudges of graffiti dancing their way along the edge of the door's outer frame.  
  
Arms crossed, Arthur shot Sophie an apologetic smile. He knew his daughter enough to know this was the best apology he could muster from her. Her Murray Franklin time hung the balance.  
  
"For?" he egged on.  
  
"... Sorry for telling Gigi that a cat could eat a rodent."  
  
"And why was that wrong?"  
  
"Because she freaked out?" she asked, craning her head back to gauge the disapproving sigh from her father.  
  
"Because it's impolite and violent," he corrected. Out of his upper peripheral, he saw Sophie's backhanded smirk, turning her half-lidded gaze back to Carrie as one of her hands rested on Gigi's shoulders.  
  
"Oh," she said plainly, moving her head forward again to look up at Sophie. "I'm sorry."  
  
Sophie's laugh in her throat was a satisfying lull of a hum, as piercing to him as a hot shower in a snow storm against the background of staccato ambient screaming and thudding pouring into the hallway.  
  
This place was _shit._  
  
"Apology accepted," she said.  
  
Carrie's head tilted again. She would become a lesson in oblong posture like her father if she kept it up.  
  
"Can we watch Murray Franklin now?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Ugh, _Daaady,"_ she whined, high and playful as he grabbed her hands and she pulled her weight down to lift her legs from the ground. Sophie fixed him with a tired half-smile that he understood only in the domain of having domineering children -- _what can you do?_  
  
"Night, Sophie," he sighed, pulling Carrie along his front as she wriggled her way through the air.  
  
"Night."  
  
Her persistence did not cease when he let her go, and she stepped into the threshold of their living room.  
  
"But Daddy," she repeated, "it's _Elton John!"_  
  
 _"Daddy nothing,"_ he cut in. "That was a half-excuse of an apology. Go get ready for a bath."  
  
Her upturned nose crinkled by way of hinting at her non-seriousness, forcing his eyes to roll. Cute. Irritating, but cute.  
  
"Do not play the cute card," he warned, watching her stalk off to the bathroom. "Carrie Frances, you are getting on my last nerve tonight."  
  
Five days left. He wanted to give her some leeway to enjoy their time together, but he had to be disciplinarian before he could be her friend. He hated the disciplinarian. Familiarity did not equate to fondness.  
  
 _Arthur, if she doesn't stop crying, I swear to god --_  
 _Jocelyn, please get away from her when you're angry._  
  
Two pills danced their way along the counter's edge, twirling and veering in a light circle. They ensured Arthur the gentlest relief of a migraine at the cost of his libido.  
  
It'd have to be a while before he saw Rose again.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Carrie, stop jumping on the bed."  
  
Droplets from her stringy wet hair clung to the walls as she ceased her bouncing and finalized the act with a kneeling position over the covers. Sighing, Arthur grabbed her round the middle with one arm, and pulled the covers back with the other. She'd be less slippery coated in hot bath water than in her pink satin pajamas. The upper part of his bare chest was streaked with her bath water hair. In a rarely achievable moment away from Dad-time, Arthur had managed to sneak in a short fifteen-minute shower after he got her bathed and dried. Both of their heads were slicked back and dark.  
  
"Are you having a Done Day?"  
  
 _Carrie, I beg of you to shut down your brain_  
  
"Not a Done Day," he said quietly, taking his time to pull the covers up to her chest. Energetic still, she wriggled her feet and squirmed to add to his difficulty. "But I warned you if you didn't apologize to Gigi then you'd gyp your way out of Murray Franklin."  
  
"I did apologize!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands down in a theatrical pout.  
  
"Not knowing what you're apologizing _for_ does not make a genuine apology," he said, craning his body up to look at her bemused smirk. As stubborn as her damn mama. His patience was drying out faster than sandpaper.  
  
Her jaw jutted to the side, lip curling, fluttering her lashes. He puffed his chest out, warring internally with his want to pull her right up out of the bed and run to the damn studio. _Murray, Murray, look at my little girl! Isn't she the cutest thing you ever saw? Cuter than even your kids, right? She knows some jokes, she's way funnier than I am_  
  
"I'll read you a book, but no Murray Franklin tonight."  
  
"I don't want a story," she said. "Can you just stay in here 'til I fall asleep?"  
  
Internally he'd wanted to have a smoke and catch the Murray episode, even as he had it recording. Punishment be damned, they were going to watch it _eventually_ \-- minus maybe the Dr. Sally bit if she got too in depth.  
  
Fuck it. Laying down until she slept was preferable to filling out child support forms that stroked his inadequacy as her caregiver. True, he was, through Joss' own fault, the custodial parent in the eyes of the court, but having to fight his ex-wife for money he should be providing made the tips of his ears burn in shame.  
  
It took all of thirty seconds, and he was lying on the left side of the bed, eyes trained on the ceiling. To his right, he felt Carrie wriggling out of her restrains to attach herself to his side, squishing her cheek against the bony outline of his shoulder blade. He was full of sugar packets -- baby girl pink and artificially sweet. Close to bursting when he felt the squish of a chubby-cheeked smile rubbing into his bare shoulder.  
  
"Why does your medicine make you not wanna eat?" she questioned quietly, wincing. A cheekbone made unpleasant contact with a sharp edge of his shoulder. On reflex, his other hand went to her hair.  
  
"It's not that I don't _want_ to, Peanut," he replied, unsure of the approach stuck in his mind. "... my medication makes my taste buds dulled out. I'll get sick if I eat something too greasy or exotic."  
  
He bit back a forceful exhale as a peppered pity kiss rested on the hollow of his cheek.  
  
"So you're allergic to it, like how we're allergic to rubber gloves?"  
  
"Rubber glove _powder,"_ he corrected. "It's a different kind of sick, Peanut. Latex powder gives us hives."  
  
"In school today," she began, shifting onto her elbow to face him fully, "we're starting to learn about plants, and Mrs. Gilby had the other kids fill a bunch of rubber gloves with -- with seeds, 'n green bean seeds, and radish seeds for planting gardens in class. But Heather Flynn and I had to sit out today, 'cause we both have the allergy and our hands would get dotty and itchy."  
  
Half-lidded eyes watched her with rapt attention. Deftly, breaking his own moral code against the disciplinarian role, he took her little hands in his, and brought them up to his lips, kissing the pads of her warm thumbs.  
  
"Heather couldn't make it to my party, but she was the one who gave me the Amazing Spider-Man comic the day before," she explained, and he let out a "hmm" of dimmed interest. "A new edition! It has Hydro-Man in it -- I love Hydro-Man!"  
  
"I thought you loved Mr. Spock and David Bowie and Tiny Tim," he teased, easing his muscles into gentility. He was still not over her having worn his God Bless Tiny Tim record down to weary, warbling hell. Strawberry Tea was going to follow him to his grave.  
  
"I don't love Hydro-Man like _that,"_ she drawled. The concave indents of his malnourished cheeks sunk deeper as he stopped trying to resist a tired grin. "Jackson Francis, at recess today -- he gave me an apple ring pop under the slides. I was gonna eat it at lunch with my fruit cup, but I think it means he wants to marry me."  
  
"Oh yeah?" he asked teasingly. "You know you're not allowed to like boys in this house. Not until you're thirty. Then you can ask your husband if you can start dating."  
  
The little slip of a squeaky laugh, hidden in her glossy, manicured hand, warmed the cockles of his heart. Her head moved to rest her chin on the fleshier part of his shoulder. From her vantage point, he looked tired but so rarely peaceful. It was nice.  
  
"Jackson Francis?" he mused, eyes wandering. "So if you get married, will that make your name Carrie Frances Francis?"  
  
She laughed again, unable to hide it. He laughed with her, more or less out of balking amusement. _This is my life and this is my weird kid, all mine and my doing, I need to hold her to make sure I'm not dreaming._  
  
"I won't change my last name if I get married," she concluded. "I like being Carrie Fleck."  
  
He was glad somebody liked it. In the list of micro offenses Joss liked to pile on in their separate raising of their daughter, the name 'Judy' had been tossed around more times than he could count in petty screaming matches.  
  
"It's a good thing I thought of it when I did," he replied. "I was so scared when I first held you, all I could think about was holding your head the right way. Your name could've been Neck if I hadn't said Carrie on a whim."  
  
 _"Neck Fleck?"_ she challenged, curling back on his person with an intermingled laugh. Chest to chest, they came close to sharing the very air, in that innocuous way Arthur always saw with dads and daughters snuggling on TV in his youth, but never dreamed -- never really _wanted_ to be a part of. He didn't, until he _was_. He could feel puffs of warm breath as she laughed with him.  
  
Not even Murray Franklin had such riveting conversations. Arthur didn't care who the headliner was.  
  
"You need to go to sleep soon, Peanut," he cautioned, but made no attempts to shove her off. Experimentally and totally innocent, Carrie lifted herself to sit on the dip of his stomach, prodding at his exposed ribcage with a glittered, orange nail.  
  
"Mom says when she gets back, she's gonna let me help paint the nursery for the baby," she mentioned, eyes on his ragged limbs. "She's making it giraffe themed."  
  
He nodded. Of course she would. Her favorite animal since he'd met her as a bubbly 18-year-old. It was only exacerbated when she was pregnant the first time and begged and begged for a giraffe-patterned high chair he couldn't pay for because _"honey, that's catalogue stuff -- we need to go to the yard sales to get one we can afford. I'll clean it and it'll look like it's brand new."_  
  
Four days later he was hospital-bound and stuffed with pills, and a _shitload_ of charcoal to regurgitate the contents of his new-dad anxiety.  
  
A phantom pain rippled in his chest when he saw Carrie smiling down at him, softly. She had a way of coaxing out of him the greatest insecurities in three decades of life without even batting a cute little eyelash.  
  
"Mom took me to Home Depot after our spa day," she continued, sensing his distress but knowing enough to work through it. "She let me pick out the paint color for the nursery. I chose this yellow paint, 'cause its name was Butter Cookie."  
  
"Mm."  
  
 _You didn't even have a nursery. I would've built you the best damn nursery if we weren't piss poor. You deserved and deserve better than me and you don't even know it._  
  
"... I think we should get something for the baby," she said, bringing him to semi-alertness. "Heather Flynn's parents are divorced, but they're friends, and her mom -- I mean, her dad took her to buy her mom boxes of tea for her morning sickness, and extra-large pajamas, 'cause her mom's eight months pregnant."  
  
He hesitated on whether responding would be a good idea in one way or another. It wasn't his kid. Wasn't his life. He might offer to babysit every couple of months, if Carrie was with him, but he wanted spend as little time in Keith's domain as he had to. To be so thoughtlessly indulgent in the fantasy that he would be a more well-off husband, buying whatever his pregnant wife desperately needed at 11:30 PM, would blur the line in the sand between reality and -- he knew he had to keep it as such -- fantasy. In the one interaction they'd had, Arthur had ascertained in the man's handshake that he shouldn't underestimate his youth -- Keith could probably kick his ass if Arthur wasn't on his guard.  
  
"How do _you_ feel about the baby?" Carrie asked suddenly.  
  
Arthur's brow lifted, as much in surprise as consideration. Outside of the social worker's office, and occasionally Gary, it's not like somebody had the _mind_ or _connection_ to ask him how he felt about anything. Carrie reversing their roles and asking him how he felt was often limited to the breakfast table -- _"Don't you feel hungry, Daddy?" "No, I'm alright, Peanut, I have my cigarette." "I don't wanna eat your oatmeal if you haven't ate any of it." "Just eat, Carrie."_  
  
She stared at him, eyes deep and reserved in ways he wasn't sure most eight-year-old children had the possibility of possessing. Her eyes were hundreds of years in a body not even a decade old.  
  
Tiptoeing that line of impropriety not fully understood to children, Carrie sunk down to cradle herself against her father's frame, nudging at his chin with her folded forearms. He felt her little toes wriggling against the sides of his pant legs. It looked a little awkward from his vantage point (and he couldn't imagine seeing the underside of his nose and cheekbones looking down at her seemed very appealing, but she didn't move), but he was glad she alleviated the added sixty pounds off of his stomach and re-dispersed it more evenly along his torso.  
  
He tried to imagine, from Joss' description, what the feeling was like from the inside. Organs shoved into corners and bones and a little alien kicking enthusiastically at outstretched skin, _swimming_ in all the added stress weight. Carrie in her unborn state was as excitable as they came. Arthur was almost sure she would be born with a clubbed foot when she'd kicked Joss hard enough to wedge little toes in her ribs. It took a half-hour of applying frozen peas just under her breast and an uncountable amount of uses of _"Goddammit, child"_ to get the little cretin away.  
  
A sympathy pain contracted a muscle in his lower torso whenever the thought flitted through his mind.  
  
Testily, Carrie pushed the weight of her upper chest onto her elbows, digging them into the nerves of his underarms. He could've said something if he really wanted to, but he continued to stare at her. All of her entrancing improbability.  
  
He didn't even object when a pudgy digit began prodding into his scraggly chin, reminding him that he'd need to shave the next morning. Work and then the social worker, good god ...  
  
"Was Mom scared when I was born?" she questioned. "I think she's scared about this new baby."  
  
"Well, we were young when we had you. And you _did_ have a giant head because you got my bone structure."  
  
Pursing her lips, as if to test such a statement, three fingers pushed into the dip of Arthur's cheek, rubbing a tight circle along his bone, before repeating the action along her own tinted face. She nodded in affirmation.  
  
"But she did say you were beautiful," he remedied. "That was the first thing your mom ever said to you was that you were beautiful. And she wasn't wrong."  
  
Joss wasn't _wrong_ \-- just adrenalized and too delirious from pain to take everything in. Carrie came out covered in blood. She was clay white and purple and every color that made Arthur's horrified heart scream that wasn't a _normal, healthy baby_ color. She had an odd-shaped cranium covered in hair from the journey out, scraping along her mother's pelvic walls. She looked squished -- more brain than baby. She was covered in unenviable fluids and waxy vernix. She ensured a hard recovery for his poor, red-faced, screaming wife. She was disgusting.  
  
And she was life. She was every unattainable joyous emotion Arthur had felt on some minuscule scale throughout his tumultuous twenty-seven years, amplified to a level that sucked the air from his lungs and dizzied him and brought tears to his eyes. She was the world in seven screeching pounds.  
  
It was not always bad to indulge in day dream. To hell with what the psychiatrists said.  
  
"Do you remember the first thing you said to me when I was a baby?" she questioned. He was relieved to hear her voice was getting heavy with sleep. There was a hard skull on his collarbone, and a dribble of water from her hair running down the side of his chest. Her ear was pressed to him, humming to the _thrum_ of his calmed heart.  
  
"I think I just said hi."  
  
Hi, among other words that got crushed in his throat in sporadic fits of laughing and sobbing. Holding her _properly_ for first time, swaddled and bundled like a baby burrito, the acrid 12:30 AM hospital coffee breath wafting right back into her chubby pink face, he cried and cooed, tender enough to not wake Joss -- strength, humanized. _Hi. Hi, Miss Peanut. Hi, sweet Carrie. You like that name we picked out for you? Carrie Frances Fleck. Are you real? I hope to god you're real. You have the best mama you could ask for._  
  
It took three days, a hell of a lot of paperwork, and a series of desensitizing newborn diaper changes before he could finally reign himself in and _not_ cry whenever he looked at her or Jocelyn.  
  
"Do you remember the first time you ever saw me?"  
  
"Why are you such a Curious Carrie tonight?" he questioned. "You've heard it a million times before."  
  
He didn't mean to get snippy. Sandwiched in the realm of fond familiarity and sweet inquisitiveness, a soured taste of _divorce_ had fuzzed the memories over time. He confused himself how he still felt so _bad_ remembering how much pain Jocelyn had been in, when she would inevitably throw all her hard work right back in Carrie's face and be a negligent mom. He questioned if nine months of puking and bruising kicks and seventeen hours of terrifying labor had hindered that bond that just _wasn't there_ \-- no matter how many doctors assured them it was, just buried down and _waiting._  
  
Carrie sat up again, pressing a palm into his sternum to steady herself. One blonde brow was furrowed as she ground a palm into her eye.  
  
"I don't mean when I was _born,"_ she drawled, and the coalescence of his looks and Joss' theatrics could've given him whiplash. "I mean _before_ that."  
  
"What, when you looked like a bunch of disconnected dots on the ultrasound machine? I might still have it in a drawer somewhere ..."  
  
"No, no," she continued. "Not then."  
  
It was 9:30 on a Monday night. Well past the point of ridiculousness.  
  
"Carrie, you're not making any sense," he stated plainly. She swiped a strand of hair behind her ear. "First two times I saw you were on the ultrasound monitor and when your mom was pushing you out. I don't think you wanna hear about the second one."  
  
 _"No,"_ she stressed again, prodding his patience like the stretch of a rubber band. "I mean the between part like ..."  
  
Her head tilted back in search of words, and she pushed uncomfortably on his groin. Settling his hands on her waist to pull her onto his stomach, he bit back the urge to say _"you are ridiculous."  
_  
"You need to go to bed."  
  
"I _meant,_ when you saw me when you -- when ...." She huffed. "When Mom was still pregnant with me, and you were laying in the bathtub and you saw me."  
  
He shook his head, beginning to push her off and making a mental note to cut back her grape juice intake before bed.  
  
"You have a good imagination," he commented.  
  
"I'm being serious!" Carrie exclaimed, hushing herself only enough to not receive a scolding. There was another occupant in the apartment, as she was oft to forget. "Everything looked dark and -- and like we were in water, but we weren't. Just you and me."  
  
Pulling her right leg off from around his waist, Arthur sat up. He spared her a humored look.  
  
"You were in dark water for nine months, Carrie."  
  
How she could remember it was a mystery, and settled a deeply unpleasant question in his chest of if she was one of those eidetic memory kids he saw the documentary about a few weeks ago. Such an implication would be costly in therapy.  
  
She had to have just dreamed.  
  
 _"Daddy,"_ she insisted, tilting her head in a lip-sucking pout that made him smile.  
  
 _"Carrie,"_ he mocked.  
  
"I _know_ what I'm talking about!"  
  
Carrie sat in an ungainly way that looked punishing to her knees, her satin-covered little rear pressed against a folded blanket at the foot of the bed, and her heels on either side of her. If luck would have it, she could take after her mom and be an acrobat, although a red light in his head forced his thoughts strictly on professional machinations in a circus tent, and not the vixen he was once married to.  
  
Her gangly little torso swayed from side to side, eyes fixed on the comforter as her head swayed in parallel to her rocking motions.  
  
"You were posed like this," she explained, bringing her hands above her head to form a wide Y-shape, with limp wrists. "You looked all floaty, and your hair was soft-looking."  
  
"Oh yeah?" he questioned, still amused. "You think that meant you saw me in the womb? What did I look like?"  
  
"Not in _there!_ Just ... you looked like you were sleeping. Like you were dead, 'til you opened your eyes and saw me. You looked tired."  
  
Slowly, his smile faltered.  
  
 **Bathroom. White light. EMT's and bruising chest compressions. Charcoal and blood in his throat. _ ~~Artie, honey, whyyy?!~~_**  
  
"And there was this big white light above your head," she prattled on, oblivious to the blanching of his face. Her arms dropped. "It looked like the bathroom door back at the old house. I don't know what I looked like, but I felt small. I _know_ I wasn't in the world yet."  
  
 _How the fuck do you know about this_ came out as a coughing, "I ... hmm, what -- what did I do next?"  
  
"You opened your eyes and saw me," she stated plainly, eyes wide, enthralled with her own storytelling abilities.  
  
"You looked at me for a minute," she continued, "then you ... you _whirled_ around --" His hands flew out on reflex to stop her from snapping her tailbone in half at the force of her dramatics. She was restrained by the arms. "-- and you went back up to the white light place. I don't remember what happened after that, but I felt all glowy! Like part of my chest was full of energy."  
  
"You're funny," he said, in lieu of anything better. "And it's getting late."  
  
Beginning to stand, feeling his back groan in upright relief, he pulled Carrie up by her underarms and obliged to her temporary reflex of him carrying her on his hip like a pair of marsupials. Her heel dug into the mattress, giving him some resistance in putting her to bed again.  
  
"Do you think part of your heart went to me?" she questioned curiously. He _swore_ her eyes brightened to a lighter shade of blue when she looked up at him.  
  
"You certainly got my heart when you were born," he said, attempting to divert.  
  
 _"Daddy ..."_  
  
"I think I need to stop letting you have juice before bed," he teased, willing himself to stay stiff at the risk of his heart giving out. "Or I think you should join the writer's club at your school. Your name is _Carrie_ Fleck -- not Little Girl Arthur Fleck."  
  
"Well Mom is always saying how much I look like you!" she exclaimed. "Mostly when she's mad at me."  
  
"Trivial," he rolled his eyes. A brow perched up when he looked at her again, sitting down on the edge of the bed, trapping her under his arm on her other side. "You are Carrie, and _only_ Carrie. I _like_ you being Carrie. If you're not Carrie then you're Peanut."  
  
Maybe the nickname, in hindsight, was a little degrading. Its origins held the same ironic warmth as his Happy did. But it brought him wifey giggles and an unconscious smile when he first said it to their hour-old daughter, and he had never felt more alive.  
  
"What do you like about me so much?" she asked, stuffing her fists under the pillow. A rabbit's tattered ear appeared from under her head.  
  
"We'll be here well into tomorrow if I had to list everything," he murmured. "Everything about you. Even when you drive me bonkers."  
  
"Make you werewolf?" she pressed, biting her bottom lip in a mischievous smile.  
  
"Only you know how."  
  
Taking the blanket tentatively between her fingers, weaving it through each digit, Carrie's smile faltered. Arthur watched her eyes shift between different sections of the bed.  
  
"Would you protect me from anything in the world?" she asked suddenly, taking him by surprise. He shifted a little to sit up, feeling a little affronted by the level of doubt on display in her voice.  
  
"... Of course I would, Peanut," he hesitated. "What makes you think I wouldn't?"  
  
 _I tried to protect you from me, but you didn't want that, I guess_  
  
"There's a lot of big, scary things in the world."  
  
At this, he leaned in playfully, nudging his nose against hers.  
  
"Not _half_ as scary as a daddy with a pretty little girl."  
  
 _Daddy._ The myriad of ways two syllables could be demonstrated as his weakest and strongest points ran circles around him. He smiled as her minty giggles drifted back to his face. She was so rarely prone to affection this overt.  
  
"I love you, Daddy."  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur had never been so distracted in just pseudo-darkness.  
  
In his haze, he'd managed to find the long-dead-and-buried custody and divorce papers he forgot he tucked away for safe keeping. There was no circumstance where he'd ever believed he'd need them, and the consideration of their necessity drove a painful spike through his heart, but he supposed he'd kept them for a reason. May as well make good use of them now.  
  
 **The child shall reside with the father 7/7 time through one week and with the mother 7/7 time the next week, beginning no later than the present age of 4, except that the beginning time of this arrangement is subject to the father's ultimate decision-making authority, deemed the custodial parent in the court of law, as to when the child is prepared for such an arrangement.**  
  
He had to have been staring at the line where he printed _Fleck, Arthur_ for four minutes before he came to. All noise sounded distorted. Any one noise he clung to -- the sirens outside, the neighbors upstairs fucking and fighting, Carrie in the next room over rustling around and whimpering, her Beatles record whirring and winding down -- was shrapnel in his ears.  
  
He really hoped she wouldn't come out and say she'd wet the bed again. For his own sake, a new mattress was hard to just suddenly come by, and she was running him ragged in early morning laundry duty.  
  
 _Pen to paper, you dumb fuck_  
  
The hand that wasn't propping his head up felt heavy, dropping on the desk like a bag of rice. A sharp smudge of ink cut right through the title **ATTORNEY GENERAL** , dirtying its formality.  
  
If Joss told Carrie about his suicide attempt, he was going to kill her. Truly, he was. That was his story for her and his story _only._ She knew that. It was as traumatizing for her to witness as it was for him to endure, as she was so quick to remind him and hang the bait over his head of nearly losing their unborn daughter in her shock. Why the fuck would she _ever --_  
  
But how the fuck did Carrie know what position he'd been in inside the tub? He made damn sure to be totally alone, and as far as he remembered, no personnel had asked the specifics besides the pills he'd ingested and how many. That was the extent of their pay grade for caring.  
  
She knew what the black void was.  
  
His eyes screwed shut, breaking his concentration again. _You were dead, 'til you opened your eyes and saw me._  
  
Wily, she was. She could make one hell of an author if she put her mind to it.  
  
Was it supposed to be an insinuation that she'd somehow _saved_ him and slapped him so hard with sensibility that he ended up saving himself? He'd spend twenty years struggling to just be ... just _be_. And then he was Arthur Fleck, boyfriend. Then husband. And then husband and father, protector, provider, domestic. It broke his brain, the pressure.  
  
He splayed out his hand on the desk, allowing himself the grounding of the rolling pen from palm tip to wrist. Pushing himself back to the present, he grabbed the pen again.  
  
 **AFFIDAVIT OF NET WORTH**  
  
His eyes traveled to the clock in the kitchen, just visible under the breakfast nook, and he sighed. Twelve-thirty. With the concentration allotted, he wouldn't be done until three in the morning.  
  
 _Do it tonight or be a pussy and don't do it at all, you have to do this for Carrie. This is all for her_  
  
 **5\. Child support is to be provided for** _Carrie Fleck -- 05/13/1973_ **and according to the attorney general and Gotham City Federal Child Support Guidelines, the amount of child support payable for that number of children is $** _200.85_  
  
A loose cigarette crushed between his lips allowed him some alleviation as he pushed through paper after paper after paper after _paper after paper --_  
  
He didn't bother changing into regular clothing when he hurried down to put the forms in the mail slot. Didn't care if the little clicks and _ding!_ of the elevator bothered the neighbors. Every hour of every day, one of them on all sides was either fighting or crying or partying or fucking. And they had the nerve to call in a noise complaint on Arthur's raucous laughter. He thanked god the landlord blew them off.  
  
A tantalizing image of a cleaner, more spacious three-bedroom apartment began to filter in his mind on the walk back. A cozier block, like their one-bedroom used to be, but without the perpetual gamble of a nice place where the landlord hated him, or a dump of a building where the landlords deemed him one of the better ones and gave him some slack. A fancy place with a washer and dryer in-unit, not to be shared with sixty-something other families. A ground-level apartment, where Carrie wouldn't have to give up her room so her ailing grandmother would be closer to the front door in an emergency, where the EMT's wouldn't have _eight floors_ to get through to get her out.  
  
Joss stared at him in his mind's eye, red around the edges as the sparkle of the diner's glossy booth made the blue of her eyes pop that much more. She was as beautiful at thirty-four as she was at nineteen, but ten times as infuriating.  
  
 _ **Why don't you just put your mom in a home?**_  
  
God save his soul, he just couldn't do it. Even if Carrie grew up and was given the authority to stick her mother in a well-deserved trash pile and never look over her shoulder again, Arthur, for all the worry his mother put him through, could not.  
  
He had no such inclinations even when, up until he announced their happy little bundle's imminence, Penny always seemed to _forget_ to buy an extra gift for Joss during the holidays.  
  
Before he allowed himself the comfort of succumbing to dead sleep, forcing his body into shut-down mode on impulse only, Arthur opened his journal.  
  
 ** _I think I did a bad thing to my ex-wife._**  
 ** _Why do I not feel bad about it?_**  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Do you still have feelings for your ex-wife?"  
  
Arthur's head tilted down, eyes fogged over and half-lidded in exhaustion. He could only resist sleep for so long before his body caved in and forced him to cat-nap like the Arkham guards who strapped him into bed. That wasn't nice. _Necessary,_ maybe, to stop him thrashing around in his sleep. But it wasn't _nice._  
  
"Does it matter if I do?" he asked rigidly. Before leaning over to retrieve his journal from the desk, he craned his body to alleviate the tense muscles in his back. Four, five, _six_ bones cracking in immeasurable, gross comfort that forced him to sigh. The cylinder of nicotine almost got crushed between his lips as a puff of smoke emanated from his nose.  
  
He was always going to be suspended in front of that door of happiness, and every fucking lock was unlatched except for one, permanently shutting him out one way or another.  
  
That he could see Joss through the crack in the door did not mean a damned thing.  
  
"Talking about it might help," Dr. Kane explained, putting forth the bare minimum cheer in her voice to sound professional. "Acknowledging your feelings about your ex-wife and the divorce and talking about them could make a more positive and open environment for Carrie. It will lead to a less strenuous relationship with your daughter and her new sibling."  
  
He was on the verge of flaring up. _How the hell do you know my daughter's name?_  
  
He remembered the journal entry, and felt foolish at the irregularity of his heartbeat.  
  
"She's the mother of my child," he said by way of diverting, shifting his arms into multiple crossed and uncrossed positions so he didn't have to focus on her, or her fucking _condescension_. "It hurts to talk about."  
  
"Arthur, your divorce was four years ago. Surely you've found some way to cope and discuss things with Jocelyn."  
  
His eyes met hers. The shadows of the light bulb's imminent death veiled Dr. Kane's face so he could only see the whites of her eyes. They did nothing to soothe. Time did not _soothe_ \-- it just _subdued._  
  
"It hurts to talk about," he repeated.  
  
She looked down at her desk, at the askew collection of papers and doctor's records pertaining to **A. FLECK**. Something carping in his brain told him that maybe he should be a little embarrassed at the shedload of files and psychiatric notes that just piled and piled and piled _and piled_ **_and piled and piled_** for his one person that mandated more work for her.  
  
He didn't feel embarrassed. Or sad, or happy or agitated or --  
  
He felt bad. There was music in his head, the voice so crystal clear but unfamiliar still. He wanted to slam his forehead right down on the edge of the desk til he remembered. Turn himself into a dunking bird on his pursuit of emptying his head. No music, no negative thoughts.  
  
"Is your daughter being provided for?" she asked.  
  
He was sitting in his chair, devoid of cuts or rivers of foamy blood. He stared at the edge of the desk that just a second ago was seeped in brain matter. She wouldn't have gotten up to get help even if he split his skull open and sprayed her precious papers with ruby rain. Just shuffled some papers, maybe pushed him with the edge of a pencil eraser until he caved in on his own corpse.  
  
"She has everything she needs," he answered. "Food, clothes, a bedroom. Toys and books."  
  
"So why are you seeking child support? You wrote that the attorney you met with could challenge your ex-wife for two-hundred dollars if you went to court."  
  
The cigarette was reaching its flaky stub. He flicked some ashes in the tray on her desk, overfilled and neglected in its necessitated emptying between patients.  
  
"... I want to treat my daughter to nice things like her mom is able to," he admitted, closing his eyes. He saw them materialize. Murray Franklin tickets. A mountain of Christmas presents. As much chocolate as her sugary heart could handle. "Does that make me a bad person?"  
  
"Arthur ... you're not a bad person for wanting better for your daughter," Dr. Kane stressed. The mantra was only comforting for so long, fleeting in one ear and out the other by the time he reached the door to leave. "But it would be beneficial for you to have an open dialogue with your ex-wife before you pursue this. It might not look good in your favor since she's expecting another child."  
  
His brows flicked up in dry amusement, crinkling the corners of his eyes in a sardonic smile.  
  
"She has enough money to have ten kids and can't spare time for her _one."_  
  
"Arthur," Dr. Kane said again. "For the sake of a smooth relationship for your daughter, I recommend you to tell Jocelyn about your plan to request child support."  
  
He bit his lip, feeling admonished. _Too late for that._  
  
This office had a similar color scheme as the head principal's office from his junior high school. He had never gone there for trouble on his own, but trouble had a way of finding him out on the race track or the cafeteria, every time the principal had forced a bully to apologize for throwing a milk carton or calling him _Cackle Fuck._  
  
 _ **Hey shit-for-brain, are those your gym shorts at the top of the bleachers? Whoops.**_  
  
"Two hundred dollars isn't much out of her pocket on an insurance agent's salary," he said quietly, wiping a stain of ash from his slacks. It left a trail of white and grey melding and disappearing into each other, like an oil painting. "She's a big girl. She'll live."  
  
\- - - -  
  
"How's the case going with your old lady?"  
  
Hoyt always had a way with words that Arthur, for better or worse, could not understand or attain for himself. Both men sucked on their respective cigarettes. He wasn't _comfortable_ around Hoyt -- he never had been. But he'd also never been plainclothes and coming to Hoyt with good news before.  
  
"The court said they would go through with the request," Arthur confided, finding himself unusually relaxed. Whether it was wise to relay to his boss that he'd be making $200 extra every other week, he was unsure, but he had to tell _somebody._  
  
He could not _wait_ to tell Carrie.  
  
"So she's gonna pay you?"  
  
"She has to."  
  
"I shoulda had a kid," Hoyt deliberated, arching his brows as he skimmed through the unenviable amount of scattered papers. Arthur questioned if he'd ever seen the desk in a tiny state before. "Didn't know you could be paid to raise 'em."  
  
"... I'm raising her because ... she -- she's my _daughter,"_ he balked, keeping himself meek. Just because the level of emotional consciousness opened to him _only_ when he watched Carrie be _born,_ didn't mean everybody was so callous. He always struggled with Carrie in mind. He wasn't using her for luxury.  
  
"You're also raising her on docked hours," Hoyt said, snuffing out the tan end of the cigarette into the tacky Florida-tourist ashtray. _Goddammit, would I love to take Carrie to the beach_. "If you're getting two-hundred extra, I'm putting you back down to forty-five hours. And it'd better be a _while_ before you come to be with another special favor."  
  
He nodded, feeling that was fair in some way. As fair as not informing his ex-wife that she legally owed him $200.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The first time Arthur had sent Carrie away on Jocelyn's week, he'd taken four days off work to recover.  
  
Hoyt had blown more than one gasket for his resident Chaplin missing two sign spinning gigs when he'd already allotted him two days off, but it had taken those two days to even get himself off the couch and just sit in the shower.  
  
He'd begged and _begged_ Joss to call him when she got Carrie acclimated to her new room. It took four days, it seemed. Joss was too stingy and distrusting to give him her phone number. The burst of life that surged through him at hearing his daughter chattering happily about all the stuffed animals in her room and the cake she and her mother made, forced him to slide to the floor and muffle his sobs into his sleeve, taking in the enthusiastic inflections in her speech.  
  
It was not a matter of _choice,_ then, just _fact:_ that he was bleeding and living for her.  
  
It got more tolerable through four years. That didn't mean he hated alternate Sundays any less.  
  
Today was the easiest it had been in all that time.  
  
"-- and we got to pick out one vegetable seed packet, and one flower seed packet. Mrs. Gilby says during the summer we should take pictures to show her for the next school year," she rattled on, sitting on the edge of the coffee table, allowing Arthur to brush her hair. It did not deter her speech that Nana seemed to be only half-listening. "Heather Flynn took the sunflowers I wanted, so I'm planting marigolds and radishes."  
  
"Radishes, huh?" Arthur questioned, low and amused and sucking contentedly on a cigarette. Maybe it was a little shameful to spoil Carrie when she was more than capable of brushing her own hair, but he would take what he could get of her realness before he sent her off. "When your mom was pregnant with you, she ate salads like a starved rabbit. She got really bad swelling when she ordered a salad with radishes. Turns out she was allergic."  
  
"The radishes are for when we make salads _here,"_ she explained. It was not the first time he'd heard it, nor would it be the last. "The marigolds are for Mom."  
  
"Well you know the first thing I'm gonna do with the money from your mom?" he asked, teasing her hair up into a pigtail. He hated the painful beaded elastic bands, but as a girl dad, was forced to be privy to them and their various uses. "I am buying you some _beautiful_ flowers for your concert."  
  
"Nana, will you be at the concert?" Carrie asked, turning her head and making a struggle for him to properly knot the hair in place.  
  
"I'll try to, dear," she said distractedly. Carrie rolled her eyes out of view. _She'll try if Thomas Wayne isn't on TV._  
  
"We'll try, Peanut," he affirmed. "I'll _definitely_ be there."  
  
"You know that Keith is gonna be there, right?"  
  
His hand faltered. A jolt of dissatisfied conventionality spread through his stomach. It seemed Carrie, as he remembered Joss telling him, was just as enthused at the inclusion as he was, judging by the lip-curled scowl she wore.  
  
"I'll be there, Peanut," he said again, going back to her hair. "I don't care if I have to sit next to Hitler of all people."  
  
Over the hum of the TV, he heard his mother softly admonish, _"That's not funny, Happy."_  
  
\- - - -  
  
Joss evidently did not know yet about the days-old court order when he went to drop Carrie off.  
  
That scared him more than it should have.  
  
She didn't call, or lash out, or mention anything of the sort about money. She'd only asked about meeting up for dinner the next time he had a day off.  
  
Arthur didn't sleep that night. If she was aggressive enough to hit Carrie over a misdemeanor with bath water, it terrified him to think what she might do at the insistence of her handing over $200 to him.  
  
 _You're so fucking soft with her --_  
 _Joss, hit me all you want, but you're not putting your hands on her_  
  
Arthur scribbled in his journal, barely giving thought as his hand moved impulsively and quickly over the page. It shook and became sloppier with every ragged breath he tried to control. Those therapy exercises from Arkham were bullshit.  
  
 _ **I don't like that I have to be scared every time I send my daughter away that it could be the last time.**_  
 _ **That terrifies me like nothing else in the world!**_  
 _ **Is anybody listening to me?**_  
 _ **My wife was in love with me once, and then we had a baby.**_  
 _ **I should've died before my marriage did. Carrie would be better off without me.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was kind of a cluster of several days in Arthur and Carrie's life -- not because I WANT it to seem clunky and disjointed, but I am desperate to really get to the big events happening within the movie. Arthur should have a certain hospital gig coming up sometime soon :)
> 
> I have to give credit to my dear friend Lady Fluff on Tumblr, who gave me inspiration for the line "He struggled with Carrie in mind," in the midst of a conversation about Arthur and Joss' parenting techniques. I thought that was wicked clever, and she deserves all the followers she gets.
> 
> $200 in 1981 is about $575 in modern times. Arthur's getting what he fuckin' deserves.


	16. The Concert

_The first time Arthur Fleck touched himself to the thought of Joss Soucie, he hated himself well into the next day, and a little after that.  
_  
 _It wasn't even his standard touching; in the weird period of time between his first official date with her up until Valentine's Day, he'd staved off the bodily urge as best he could. He couldn't jack off thinking of her while he tried to get acclimated to the title of boyfriend, and he just as urgently couldn't not think of her.  
_  
 _Valentine's Day split his brain right down the middle, piercing into his gut with a double-edged sword that punished his cock and his brain for such shameful thoughts.  
_  
 _What kind of pathetic imitation of a boyfriend takes his girlfriend to get ice cream for breakfast for his first proper Valentine's Day, in lieu of a real present? What was Arthur supposed to say when she presented him with roses and a naughty picture of herself in that yellow bra? It looked wrinkled and dated, like it belonged to her mother (and he knew for a fact it was taken well before he crash-landed in her lap; her hair was still honey blonde). The hungry dog in his brain shot a warning light to his groin that told him to rip it right off and lavish her tits with drooling hickeys and teeth marks and obscene sucking noises.  
_  
 _They weren't tits; they were breasts. That happened to belong to his sweet girlfriend, whom he knew had to make the first move. He had to be a gentleman. And he was at work.  
_  
 _He wanted to die the whole shift. Shove all the pills in his mouth like they were Thanksgiving bread rolls and let them do their black magic. She smiled at him and said she didn't mind the lack of money on his end, but he did.  
_  
 _A trail of rosy carnage followed him back to his mother's apartment, where he locked himself away in his room. His mother was at work. Had she been there, he suspected she would've asked in mock-pity if he was crying over a breakup. Maybe saved him a fish and chips TV dinner by way of consolation.  
_  
 _The picture of Joss would be taped into his journal later that evening. Until then, Arthur found himself in the unusual position of lying on his stomach, picture in one hand, his semi-hard cock in the other. He was shifted somewhat on his knees, finding a gentle rhythm in the head brushing against the grey sheets -- they'd needed to be washed anyway.  
_  
 _A knot of anxiety and loathing imbued the lining of his stomach, scaring even the little green monster of laughter into its cage. His attention alternated between Joss' fleshy thighs on display, her full tits ready to burst out of the stupid yellow bra, and her terribly virtuous expression. She looked blissful; nose and eyes scrunched in a succulent smile, hair bobbing and spilling over her right shoulder.  
_  
 _Fuck. **Fuck.** He wanted to rip that bra off -- it was so unlike her and looked to predate her. Take her pink areolas in his mouth and suck on them like a sugar candy, run his tongue on the underside of her prominent nipples. Make her eyes screw shut, her nose scrunch as she wailed at the contact, sharp and hot and wet. He wanted her to wail and cry while she allowed him to take her. He wanted ... he ...  
_  
 _He imagined it was **her** hand. His grip loosened, focusing the monkey part of his brain on all the textures against his cock as he drove forward at a slower pace: the soft but old polyester scratching on his leaking head, the sensitive mound getting slick with warm, sticky fluid, the intense hot flash inside him as he clenched and unclenched around a vein.   
_  
_The sheets smelled like him: sweaty, reeking of hormones and dollar-store cologne. The acuteness of his senses when he was horny forced a degrading grunt out of his throat. It was guttural and animalistic, salivating his teeth as he heard her sweet voice all husky, flushing him red from the tips of his ears to the throbbing vein in his neck: **does my hand feel good around your cock, squeezing it like that? You want my pussy? Go faster, Artie.**  
_  
 _Arthur wanted her. He wanted her so fucking bad. A painful and delectable heat knotted in the dip of his spine as his hand grew slick with his sloppy rhythm. The bulb of his nose drew inelegantly over the sheets, a curl sticking to his forehead as his mouth fell open.  
_  
 _He wanted to kiss her while he fucked her. He wanted to kiss her and make love to her. He wanted her to make love to him. He wanted her to want his love.  
_  
 _The heightened sensitivity of his squeezed cock forced him to feel the sickening pulse of near-overstimulation. He moved easier in his own hand as a smear of fluid tinted the entire head. A high, pathetic whine came out as a whimper in the front of his throat as he imagined one of Joss' heels digging into his thigh, forcing him deeper inside her. **I love you, Arthur, I love you. Right there, baby, right there, keep going!**  
_  
 _The picture of Joss lay forgotten in the crevice between the wall and the bed. A mouthing of 'I love you' was lost to the bed sheets. The cramp in his hand pushed further and further out of his list of grievances as he screwed his eyes shut further, seeing Joss' thighs opened to him, her perky little ~~breasts~~ tits bouncing in excited circles underneath him as his cock stretched her deliciously. Hearing her sobbing as the top of his shaft assaulted her swollen clitoris ... that obscene slapping of skin on skin as he worked in tandem with her ...  
_  
 _ **Arthur, I'm gonna come -- make me come on you. I love you, I love you! Arthur! Arthur. Arthur.**  
_  
 _He was sweating when he came, thoroughly ruining his bed sheets. For a solid minute, he stayed snug in his own hand, gripping the end of the shaft, his thumb intermingled in the untrimmed curls shielding his pelvis. His toes curled and uncurled as a groan was crushed out of him.  
_  
 _The sudden emptiness alleviated nothing that it was supposed to.  
_  
 _His pillow could not substitute for a real flesh-and-blood woman. He half-buried his face in it, disgusted by the cheap smell of second-hand geranium. It would've been so easy to call Joss, ask her how her day was and if her folks had any plans, **do you wanna go to the theater and watch a Buster Keaton flick?**  
_  
 _It was a good hour before he moved out of his bed, one distraught limb at a time._  
  
 _Twenty-year-old Arthur Fleck spent the rest of his first real Valentine's Day washing his bed sheets, changing into his pajamas early, and heating up a Banquet TV dinner, every pea and diced carrot as thick as a golf ball in his throat._  
  
Arthur took longer than usual to comb his hair back, taking meticulous care to let the mesh of curls rest evenly and cleanly above his shoulders and behind his ears -- washed and scrubbed in the shower just a half-hour earlier.  
  
He didn't always make such a flair with big events, but Carrie ... Carrie was different.  
  
He tugged the hem of his maroon vest, flattening it against the white button-up and pallid skin that draped underneath. A spritz of cheap cologne (still second-hand but he was happy to say over a dollar) was daubed on the nape of his neck. Auggie sat on the toilet lid, watching and purring.  
  
 _"Happy? Do you know where my flower-pin hat is?"_ emanated through the little space between the bathroom and the first bedroom.  
  
"Mom, it's a high school," he replied, giving himself a satisfied once-over before retreating. "You can't wear a hat in a school."  
  
In truth, that school deserved not a single modicum of respect. Low in his belly, Arthur was anxious to set foot in the pit after eighteen years. But if it enabled him to see the little girl for a few extra hours, he'd walk through the frozen Tundra in just his skivvies.  
  
He blew out a breath. A whole generation of kids had been born and graduated in the time since he left high school. A tingle of something uncomfortable and tight formed in his chest.  
  
"We're getting old," he commented. Through the reflection in the vanity mirror, he smirked when his mother eyed him with false offense.  
  
"Speak for yourself," she remarked. "I feel ten years younger."  
  
"Look at you!" he exclaimed teasingly, smiling at her from the door frame. She'd dug out a floral organza dress, which miraculously still fit after decades of wear-and-tear. Peach lipstick and blush dusted her lips and the highs of her cheekbones. "You don't need a hat."  
  
He could hear the joints of her elbows cracking as she moved to stand, and his first impulse _\-- get right back in bed, I'll get you your sleeping pills, she'll understand --_ was overridden by restraint taught to him by years of child rearing.  
  
"Are you sure you're going?" he asked softly, not wanting to deter but always cautious.  
  
"I want to watch my granddaughter sing -- she's born to be an entertainer, like her father."  
  
He looked at his shoes bashfully, smiling like the little boy who was picked as line leader for the day.  
  
\- - - -  
  
That Carrie seemed to have at least one friend -- this Heather Flynn -- put her one step above her father when he was in school.  
  
It was ironic, sad, slightly infuriating, and above all else hilarious to him that he went all twelve years without a real close friend (as his lab partners were oft to remind him, they were not friends just because they dissected a cow's eyeball in biology) yet somehow procured a girlfriend -- a steady, flesh-and-blood, sex-crazed _girlfriend_ almost as soon as he hit college.  
  
There was no joy or warm, fuzzy nostalgia associated with walking through the squeaky side doors to Gotham Central High School's alabaster white lobby. Though guiding her, he felt like a fourteen-year-old clinging to his mother's arm again, flushed with embarrassment at the looks the older junior year boys were leering at him with. _This is my son, Arthur, but I call him Happy. He's a little shy, but he's a good boy._  
  
The lobby smelled like he remembered -- stuffed to the gills with fresh basketball smell (the sign outside prominently announced a final game of the year the same night as the concert) and sweaty, oafish, uncoordinated people. _His_ people, whether he or they liked it or not. He was not too fond of the idea of someone interlocking him in a noogie or indian burn from behind, or making small talk about kids with people who would only vaguely remember his name, his shadow -- _I laughed a lot, remember?_  
  
He could practically feel oven-cooked fish sticks being thrown at his head again, a chocolate milk carton down his shirt.  
  
As he wrapped his fingers tighter around his mother's spindly arm and careened around the clusters of jabbering adults blocking a direct path, he remembered ruefully, somewhat pleasantly, the rumor that Rudy Paulson got knocked up after her senior prom, and forewent college to get a stable office secretary position.  
  
 _Prom queen only got you so far_  
  
He was pleased to see the auditorium had been given a boost of upholstery in his absence. The torn fabric of the seats seemed to have been remodeled to velvet, the walls now splashed with an owl crest. Something about school spirit, he supposed.  
  
Countless discipline assemblies, he was stuck in the scratchy back seats with the more faint of heart kids while they were lectured about the dangers of drunk driving for a prom he had no chance in hell of attending. The closest he'd ever gotten to a woman before Joss was when he was seventeen, and Barbara Whitworth dropped in a dead faint right next to him during the slideshow presentation of James Dean's car wreck. She'd gripped his thigh for leverage before she was ushered off to the nurse, and he spent the rest of the stupid assembly with one leg crossed over the other, stiff with arousal and burning shame licking at his jaw, twirling her thick glasses in his fingers.  
  
His eyes only scanned for a few seconds before he found two silhouettes sitting alone in the fifth row.  
  
He could _feel_ the hate rolling off of her before he properly saw her face, and silently wondered if her anger put up a force field that shied everyone else away.  
  
Her eyes trailed in his direction when he took his seat to her right, putting his mother next to him in the aisle seating, but her glare didn't quite land on him. Her lips were pursed together and colored with rust. The warbling of a pastel-tinted pamphlet blocked out the ambiance of whatever jovial, trivial conversations swallowed the four of them in their stony silence.  
  
 _Fucking please, don't laugh_  
  
A wisp of a blonde curl brushed against the scar on his upper lip, teasing in its taste, as Joss moved her head quickly to the occupant on her left side.  
  
"Baby, I'm gonna go take a walk -- feet are killing me. Will you save our seats?" Her voice was infantile and high as he'd not heard it for a long time. _New, stupid puppy love._  
  
Joss transferred the program over to Keith's lap. Arthur observed a brutish thumb stroking the webbing of her hand, bringing it up to his lips for a shadowy kiss, and Arthur genuinely wanted to gag, warring in his own head. _Get over yourself! You don't love her anymore, you love the daughter she birthed to you._  
  
"Don't be too long," Keith replied with a gentle smile.  
  
A guarded hand rested on Joss' stomach as she pushed herself up out of the seat.  
  
"Come with me."  
  
"I -- I don't really --"  
  
She pulled him up anyway, taking the most basic courtesy to avoid the clamoring of heeled shoes on his poor mother's feet (he'd dropped the lavender bouquet in her unsuspecting lap) as Jocelyn all but yanked his arm out of the shoulder socket and through the auditorium door. The path navigated its way around her, and Arthur gave up trying to be mindful of _"I'm sorry"_ by the fourth shoulder bump.  
  
"You think you're _hilarious,_ don't you?"  
  
She rounded on him, locking the door and isolating them in an empty women's bathroom, where her voice ricocheted off bricks of white and shamrock green. He cringed. At Joss, at the metallic dispenser on the wall that he got abruptly shoved into, at the shade of green he'd hated since he set foot in this damn school two decades earlier.  
  
"You got some balls, Fleck!" Joss started again, pointing a finger at him. Still orange, matching their daughter's, but much less cute.  
  
An involuntary smirk crept onto his face before he could help himself. Realizing the accidental entendre, a tinge of red shot from her cheeks up to her glossy forehead. Huffing, she crossed her arms over her chest, and the salivating idiot part of his brain made him take note that yes, her breasts were _growing_ again. They jiggled as she shifted on her feet and got pushed together when she flexed her arms.  
  
He cleared his throat and clenched a fist by his side. _No laughing, no laughing, please --_  
  
 _"Why_ did I get a letter from the courthouse, telling me I owe you two-hundred dollars?" she clipped.  
  
His eyes shifted to the ground, nudging the tip of his shoe against a piece of gum inconsiderately driven into a small square tile. It was dark grey and somehow glittery in color -- barely looking like gum at all.  
  
Girl dad or not, he would never understand the female affinity for shiny speckles that were a thousand times harder to clean up than baby diapers.  
  
Fisting the insides of his pockets, a curl of lint and a few quarters brushing his thumb, he said quietly, "Child support."  
  
"You want me to pay you to babysit your child."  
  
"I mean --" His brows rose in defense, still unable to meet her eye. "-- it's not for _me._ It's for Carrie."  
  
"Carrie gets a ten-dollar allowance every week at my house," Joss said, her voice as tight as her sky-risen brows. "She's fine on money."  
  
"It's for me to _help_ Carrie," he stressed, feeling sensitive to the way his voice bounced off the walls and right back to them, intent on giving them whiplash. Even through the cacophony surrounding them on all sides he was sure somebody would accidentally eavesdrop on his personal business. Such was his luck. "I want some support in making sure she has everything she needs --"  
  
"She _has_ everything she needs!"  
  
"-- so I'm not working _fifty hours_ and missing valuable time with her." He sighed, feeling indignant. It straightened the bones in his back so his one-inch height advantage stacked up to her in her clunky teal heels. "Just because it's easy for _you_ to restrict your hours with our daughter, doesn't mean it's easy for _me."_  
  
"Do you forget that I have a job, too, where I'm providing for her?" she asked, resting one hand on the curvature of her spine. Acrylic orange nails tapped against the metal dispenser, the echo shreking in his ears and stabbing into his frontal lobe. "And I'm pregnant."  
  
He sighed. The pregnant excuse could only work so many times for him. _Art, honey, I can't lift the laundry basket, I'm pregnant and my back hurts. Arthur, I'm giving up my smokes, I don't care what the doctor said, I'm the pregnant one and it's my choice. I don't know why I'm crying, okay? I'm sad and I'm four months pregnant., leave me alone. **Arthur, what the fuck were you thinking?!** I'm six months pregnant, I could've lost the baby the same day I lost you and my life would've been over! Arthur, sweetie, I'd much rather you stay here with your wife and me get through being hungry on my own, I don't want you out at eleven at night for some stupid fish sandwiches, I'm almost nine months pregnant._  
  
A key scratch of jagged graffiti on the top corner of one outer stall read **_BE FUCKING POLITE!_** His eyes lingered.  
  
"You can afford it. I want ..." He hesitated, ruminating. Contemplating how it might appeal to his cynical ex-wife. "... I want Carrie to have things I never had when I was a kid. I -- I wanna be the one to provide for her. Fuck's sake, Joss, this is my _daughter._ I'm not doing this to piss you off, I'm trying to be the father she _needs_ me to be."  
  
This was not the time or place to be having such a trivial argument. Joss' eyes flitted past him to the checkered tiles over his shoulder, and back to the dispenser between the two of them. A fight or flight tug in his gut alternated between the three primal urges to kiss her, slap her, or make a mad dash past her to get back to the auditorium. The concert wouldn't start for another thirteen minutes, as suggested by the blinking digital clock above the rows of sinks, but he felt less suffocated in the sea of strangers than standing alone with Jocelyn.  
  
"You wanna buy stuff for Carrie," she stated.  
  
"More than anything."  
  
"Okay." One brow rose, putting little wrinkled hills on the right side of her forehead. "Do you wanna take her to buy training bras then?"  
  
"... What?"  
  
"I'm taking her to try on training bras tomorrow after school, but you can do it since you seem intent on stealing --"  
  
A firecracker spark of laughter deafened her careful zeal. When Arthur shoved his face in the crook of his arm, his crinkled eyes pooling with tears, Jocelyn felt the balloon of satisfaction puncture and air out, slowly. The laugh muffled but was unavoidable. Standing dumbly, Joss let her eyes wander anywhere else.   
  
Her mouth pressed into a thin line when the laugh hitched, desperate for a steadying breath. Coming up for air, Arthur's face and neck were tinted pink. Hunching over a porcelain sink, the sleeve of Arthur's shirt skimmed his mouth, until he was sputtering and snorting into his palm.  
  
Joss scratched the side of her head, tugged up in a teased ponytail that was apparently becoming savvy. She didn't feel savvy or smart as she looked in the mirror. Shifting her eyes between her loose cannon ex-husband and herself, she looked and felt pregnant, and grossly bloated and callous and stupid and like she hadn't slept in days, the way the fucking mascara was smudged under her eyes.  
She looked cracked out and wholly ashamed.  
  
 _"You -- you_ did that on _purpose,"_ Arthur wheezed.  
  
Huffing, Joss pulled loose a few strips of paper towels. He snatched them from her.  
  
"I did not do that on _purpose,_ Arthur," she lied, bracing herself for the karmic baby kick to her spine. Seeing the bony outline of his shoulder blades through his white shirt and the edges of his vest, she was almost disappointed at the lack of internal retribution.  
  
 _You kick and kick and kick all day until the one time you really deserve to, you're just like your big sister_  
  
"You _know_ it makes me uncomfortable," he started again, gruff and struggling for air, but thankfully controlled in his laughing now. "Talking about Carrie and that stuff. You _knew_ I would laugh because you _know_ I hate it."  
  
"Well, I ..."  
  
Her head slouched. At the forefront of her mind was the death of their old family cat, Lavern. Arthur trapped himself in the bedroom, laughing and crying the house down for a half-hour. She was terrified he would laugh up a lung while she had a toddler rocking on her hip and a decaying cat wrapped in a scarf and an old shoe box, stinking up her apartment.  
  
The clock indicated that three minutes had gone by. She hugged herself tighter, wincing. He didn't have a half-hour to spare to collect himself.  
  
"I can't believe I have to know you," Arthur sniffled, dabbing the paper towel at the corner of his eye. Joss scoffed, not entirely confident in the sound of it. "For the _rest of my life."_

 _"Your_ broken condom," she muttered.  
  
"Well _you_ were on top of _me."_  
  
He tossed the paper towels in a nearby bin and brushed past her to unlock the door. He allowed her to lead him out once it seemed that the coast was mostly clear. Eight minutes.  
  
"Oh, pardon me -- pardon me for a second."  
  
Their heads turned. Just inside the auditorium door, a middle-aged brunette in a leopard-print blazer was standing near the stack of programs and motioning for their attention. She seemed unfazed by their stony silence, and walked toward the pair. A spackle of light cut into the ruby red of her lipstick, much younger than herself.  
  
"I'm Rhode Gilby -- I'm Carrie's teacher at Van Buren Elementary."  
  
Her hand shot out to take Joss' in for greeting.  
  
"Oh, I -- hello," Joss fumbled, and secretly Arthur was pleased to hear her off her guard, forcing a smile of gentility.  
  
"Are you Carrie's mother?" she asked. Looking over Joss' shoulder, "How are you, Mr. Fleck?"  
  
Arthur nodded, not fully trusting himself to speak from his minutes-long laughing attack. His chest still twinged with physical ache.  
  
"You're Carrie's teacher -- did she do something wrong?" Joss asked, finally pulling her hand away, and Arthur held back a snort of derision. She always, _always_ expected a character assassination, from the time Carrie was a screaming, flailing baby who insisted on her father's bottle feedings than her mother.  
  
"No, no, just the opposite," Mrs. Gilby said. "I'm here for a few of my students in the program tonight, but I wanted to find you two to gloat on Carrie today. She was leading the class to the art room this morning, and stopped everything to help a little girl in a leg brace. Poor Jeannie Donovan just fell right over in her crutches in line, but Carrie didn't think twice about stopping to help her get up."  
  
Joss released a breathy sigh, as much joy as narcissistic relief, Arthur realized, as he felt his chest tint with indiscernible fuzziness.  
  
"She knew she could get in trouble for stopping the line, but I let it slide because I was proud of her myself," the woman beamed. "She said her father struggles with a disability, and she's still trying to learn how to help people."  
  
Arthur might've laughed, pleasant and entirely warm, had Joss not turned her body to smile at him. It grounded him to reality, a reminder to keep himself leveled. Inside he was screaming.  
  
 _That's my girl, look how amazing my girl is, Joss do you hear what my girl did --_  
  
"Well ..." Joss grinned, shrugging her shoulders in false modesty that was unbecoming of her. "That's how we're trying to raise her. To do the right thing."  
  
Euphoric nerves delayed the words from settling under his skin, until they did, sick and oily. His eyes trained on Joss momentarily as his smile lessened. She'd washed away the proud dad stamp etched into his forehead, as she was wont to do, unknowing or otherwise in her intentions.  
  
 _I don't see you doing much **raising** at all_  
  
"Well you're doing a good job," Mrs. Gilby continued. "The both of you are."  
  
Whichever one of them she was stressing it to, Arthur wasn't sure. Both implications irritated him enough to take wider strides back to the seats than he believed he was making.  
  
"Arthur, for heaven's sake!" Joss huffed, high and quiet, trying to reign in her mouth. However lewd she enjoyed being in public, _this was a school._  
  
He stopped briefly to allow her to get to her seat before him. A twinge of impulsivity nearly shot his arm out as he watched the curve of her stomach brush against the occupied seats in front of them. Somehow he controlled himself and got to his rightful seat between Joss and his mother.  
  
"Did you take anything before we got here, honey?"  
  
Keith's voice cut through like glass and made a beeline for Arthur's temple. His eyes traveled over slightly, feeling awkward to look and feeling more awkward not to. Joss' hand was once again being caressed in her new lover's grasp, seemingly feather-light.  
  
His jaw clenched. _Don't say anything._  
  
"I took half an Aleve before I got dressed," she answered sappily. "I should be fine."  
  
Arthur unconsciously reached for Penny's sleeve. She would never initiate gestures of comfort, but rarely would she ever deny them if she saw their necessity for his benefit. Their fingers intertwined as Arthur closed his eyes. He was not comfortable -- he never was.  
  
 _Think of her, think of her, think of her_  
  
He was not comfortable, but he settled.  
  
"Arthur?"  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"Carrie's name is in this, more than once," Jocelyn said, prodding the inside of the program with a glossy nail.  
  
He turned slightly as the pamphlet was pushed between them. Her nail dragged down both sides of the folded paper, stopping at each familiar print.  
  
"See? Carrie Fleck, two times. D'you think she's singing by herself?"  
  
He shrugged, intrigued at the thought but finding it out of the realm of probability. Not his Carrie. Not with her voice.  
  
"She would've told me if she was," he said quietly. "She didn't tell you?"  
  
"Carrie doesn't tell me anything."  
  
An eye roll went thankfully unspoken of as the house lights dimmed. The indistinct mutterings that created a soft physical buzz in Arthur's head were cowed into a formidable silence as the stage lights brightened. Eighteen youths -- nine boys, nine girls -- and one adult woman stood on a collection of metal risers, humming in near-purring consonance to their director.  
  
Arthur closed his eyes, enamored slightly with the girls' black dresses and green satin waist sashes, but not fully capable of attention if his one reason for being there wasn't to make herself known yet. Peals of soprano and bassy voices tugged at a nerve in his chest; the feather-sensitive cord of _calm._ He didn't recognize the piece -- it seemed to be a church hymn. It was pretty, whatever it was.  
  
To his left, he heard his ex-wife humming the lilting alto harmony. In the back of his mind, he was reminded that she had told him once of her year and a half in her high school choir. Funny what his little brain recollected of her.  
  
Against his better judgement, his eyes opened and locked automatically on her stomach. On the two intertwined hands caressing the swell of the gleaming honey fabric. On her eyes, shifting between the stage and her lover, smiling. Never once directing her warmth at Arthur, and never once having a discernible reason to.  
  
He closed his eyes again, telling himself she hadn't ripped at his chest.  
  
The song faded to the attention-gripping hum it had seeded from. He joined in on the clapping of appraisal at its finish, appreciating the minute of distraction from the image seared into his brain.  
  
"Oh, my god, Arthur, _look."_  
  
A jolt of electric shock forced his eyes open again as Joss' other hand made contact with his wrist. His heart was _ka-thumping_ in his ears as instinct let him hone in on the blonde bobcut making her way to the front riser, her dress a white and sky blue collection to the subdued rainbow of her nine classmates.  
  
She curled unto herself, folded arms hugging her white stockings as she sat down with the other kids. While the conductor prattled to the audience about the end-of-year ceremonies that didn't concern him, Arthur smiled as Carrie's eyes gleamed. Although he doubted she could see him from her vantage point, the love light in her familiarized expression ruffled the _good_ giggles in his chest.  
  
"Is she wearing makeup?" he questioned, unknowingly tilting his head to unleash the question only in Jocelyn's vicinity. A ghost of a laugh curved into the shell of his ear.  
  
"Just some gloss and lipstick and peach blush," she assured. A pinball of anxiety ricocheted its way to every rib inside of him. "She wanted to feel a little more grown up."  
  
"Oh, my god."  
  
The minutes-old resentment had melted away, remembered only in the ache of his vocals. Arthur slumped down in his seat, to Jocelyn's amusement, only to sit straight up again, face pallid as Carrie stood up -- shakily and eyes wide as tea saucers, but wholly alone -- and made her way to the collection of microphones at the stage's center.  
  
The grip Jocelyn had on his wrist traveled to his upper arm, inviting some nails to meet clothed flesh and bone. Acutely he heard a piano and a hushed squeal.  
  
"Oh, my god, _Arthur --"_  
  
Tucking her hands behind her back, reminiscent of both of her enthralled parents but all at once her own person, Carrie sucked in a breath and opened her mouth.  
  
"Arthur," Joss gasped, "our _baby --"_  
  
The grip on his arm slacked, finding refuge in cupping her own face, rose-tinted in awe.  
  
Arthur was stock still, frozen with an adoring grin on his face as Carrie's voice seeped out of the microphone and awashed the audience -- slow as molasses, steady, high and untrained and trembling with unparalleled fear that undermined her own confidence, _listen to yourself, how do you not have confidence --_  
  
"Oh, Happy," Penny was grinning, pawing at his right arm, "that's from the Sound of Music, isn't it?"  
  
Until she stopped singing, taking a timid step back to let two high school girls go forward but never abandoning her position in the middle, his brain had shut out any rhyme or reason to allow him to ruminate that it was.  
  
 _Edelweiss, edelweiss._  
  
Blue eyes flitted in their direction for only a second, casting a polite smile. Joss let out a half-giggle that Arthur knew was only capable when love pried its way into her soul. She waved at the girl.  
  
A blonde webbing warmed Arthur's neck as an ear-bone met his shoulder. Tentatively, on ages-forgotten reflex, rusted in its neglect, a soft hand covered his own in his lap. It didn't dare go any further and search for her own comfort, but didn't shy away at the lack of response, good or bad.  
  
Carrie looked at them again. She smiled. She stepped forward. A dark-skinned arm of one of the girls _invited_ her to step forward.  
  
 _ **Mr. and Mrs. Fleck, your daughter is just amazing.**_  
 _ **Thank you, we know. We tell her every day.  
**_  
Arthur unconsciously dared to interweave Jocelyn's dainty pinky between his thumb and forefinger, head swimming and filling with cotton _\-- the cotton of an edelweiss flower --_ and he beamed unapologetically as Carrie's voice stuck out from the two older girls. The triplicity swelled to a volume and vigor that gripped him by the heart, their middle member fighting for inclusion.  
  
The peach tint of her high cheeks spread to the upper half of her face in her fist-balling zeal. If she overwhelmed herself any further, she would have to tremble to let it out. If she overwhelmed him any further, he would have to lay down and die.  
  
When they stopped, Carrie allowed herself to be walked back, wiping at an eye with the back of her wrist as the audience erupted in a hailstorm of acclimation. Joss turned to him, nose scrunched and laughing.  
  
"I think she's crying," she said, only loud enough for him to hear over the fervor. Arthur wiped the corner of his eye.  
  
"Good," he responded, "'cause I'm crying."  
  
The jackhammer cackle was refreshing in its staccato nature, cutting through the burst of applause that seemed to only blend into another song that Arthur paid only a modicum of attention to. Some jazzy scatting number that was all voice and snappy fingers and no Carrie.  
  
She came back to the stage again, allowing herself to be pulled along by a girl of similar stature. Her hair was also sunny blonde, but to her elbows and pinned back in crimped waves. Apparently crimping was a new trend, and he knew Carrie was refusing hair cuts to achieve it.  
  
A smattering of _"There's Heather, Brendan, look, there's Heather"_ stole his attention for only a second, and it came from the row in front of them, a few seats to Arthur's left. Two tall men, one of them stocky and as blonde as the girls, and an Asian woman were all beaming up at the supposed Heather in the minty green dress, still holding onto Carrie. They were both curtained into a circle with two taller high school girls, one of whom began clapping a rhythm Arthur had a hard time keeping up with.  
  
Carrie's foot looked to have started _tap, tap, tapping_ away to the rhythm as her voice, higher, intermingled with Heather's and cut through the two altos they stood between. Her body was betraying any self-control to stay still, and her shoulders jutted in tandem, her left knee bouncing as they sang about lollipops.  
  
"Arthur, she's _dancing,"_ Joss hummed, as though taking in the beauty of her skittishness for the first time. Maybe she really was. _"Our baby's dancing."_  
  
Carrie restrained herself eventually to a mutual hip sway that her other three companions started into, although her foot never stopped tapping. The thigh of his maroon pants warmed with the friction of Joss' leg moving in time with her daughter, heartily amused.  
  
"She dances like her daddy," Joss said, leaning in to breathe it into Arthur's neck. She did not move away, nor did he move to make her.  
  
Not even when her head took refuge against his shoulder again, forgetting her comfort-for-hire to her left.  
  
At the song's abrupt, poppy end, the audience clapped politely, and Arthur closed his eyes, immersing himself in the tight spring feeling in his chest that nearly choked him.  
  
He smiled as if he had all the right to.  
  
\- - - -  
  
An hour passed by as Arthur allowed himself a luxury of day dreaming.  
  
Joss had long taken her head away from his comfort, but the feeling was still there. Still warming his shoulder. Still keeping him in a little snow globe of delighted ignorance, no matter how many times Joss nudged him with her elbow.  
  
 _We're still married, Art, and I'm still in love with you and I still call you Art because you're still a work of Art to me, look at our daughter, our work of Art_  
  
The familiar buzz of clustered voices brought him to awareness as the house lights brightened again. His eyes opened on the seats in front of him now emptied, their occupants standing at a grander height than he might've imagined when he found the time to look at them.  
  
He stood up, turning to lean against the seats, a _bing_ of excitement rattling in his brain as he noticed and remembered the flowers he'd bought, laying in his mother's lap. He urged her to keep sitting until Carrie got to them.  
  
Joss stood up again, pressing a hand into her belly as she readily accepted Keith's help. A squirming knot closed up in Arthur's chest. Keith had been so quiet, so phantom-like through the concert, Arthur had nearly forgotten he was there at all.  
  
"No headache?" Keith asked, and the smile Joss gave him was so plastic that it was almost nauseating to look at. A deft kiss was pressed to the back of her palm. Who the hell was this man, the Prince of Wales?  
  
"No headache," she affirmed. "I enjoyed myself."  
  
"Lucky," Arthur murmured, shuffling out of the row and into the semi-emptied aisle. Most of the audience members hadn't moved from near their chairs, except the ones that enjoyed blockading the doors. He rubbed his temple, eyes skimming slightly and then widening on the bouncy figure rushing towards him from the stage.  
  
"Oh, my gosh!" he exclaimed, pulling her in for a dipped hug that saw her almost landing on the ground in a shrieking, laughing heap. "You are in _so much_ trouble, young lady."  
  
 _"Why?"_  
  
"Because --" He pulled Carrie into the air, hugging her close. "-- you didn't tell me it would be the Carrie Fleck Hour. I would've brought my camera with me!"  
  
Out of his peripheral, he saw two figures approaching, and unconsciously turned to let himself be greedy. The smell of cherry soap and Carrie's peach-colored smile made him dizzy. Keeping a firm grip on her leg with one arm hooked under her, he moved to swipe a thick lock of hair behind her ear, letting it linger for a second. _My ears are your ears and I just heard an angel._  
  
"Was I good?" she asked, forcing a playful eye roll out of him. As if he was allowed to say no. It was _illegal_ to say no.  
  
"You were _marvelous,_ darling, just _marvelous,"_ he drawled, taking on his old queen voice that produced a high giggle and her rubbing her nose against his. "You made me cry, you know that?"  
  
"You _cried?_ I'm sorry."  
  
"No apology needed," he said. "Hey, you know what? Nana and I got those flowers I promised for you."  
  
"Nana!" Carrie shrieked, kicking childishly to be set down again. On the ground again, she enveloped his mother in a hug around the neck, reciprocated by a spotted hand pawing at her shoulder blade.  
  
"You were wonderful, sweetheart," Penny smiled, presenting the lavenders.  
  
"Are you glad you showed up?"  
  
"Of course," she affirmed. "I've been looking for a reason to get out."  
  
Carrie smiled, at her grandmother, at her father, basking in the starry, adoring grin he gave right back, before turning to her mother. Joss was crouched to her daughter's height to the best of her bloated ability, smothering her cheeks in glossy kisses, which Carrie seemed to not mind.  
  
"You didn't _tell_ me you could sing like that!" Joss exclaimed, pulling Carrie to her shoulder for a swaying hug. "Oh, my gosh, my cherry girl can _sing!"_  
  
The crinkling of plastic brought Carrie's attention to the previously undetected bouquet Keith held out to her with a grin. Arthur watched her tilt her head up at him, and then make a dash back to her father. He picked her up without thought, without remorse. Spindly arms clung to his neck. A little thumb pushed into the loose fringes of curls. He felt the lavenders behind his back, their roots nudging into his shoulder blade.  
  
"Can I spend the night at Daddy's house?" she asked, craning her body to face her mother, who slumped.  
  
"Not tonight, baby," she sighed.  
  
"I mean, she can if she wants --"  
  
"We're trying to get the nursery finished by Wednesday," Joss cut in, running short on patience. Arthur lightly flinched. "Carrie wants to help set up, don't you, baby?"  
  
Lacking in an answer, Carrie burrowed her head sweetly into Arthur's neck, muffling quietly against his collarbone, _"He's stupid."_  
  
 _"Carrie,"_ Joss huffed, pulling at the girl before Arthur had a chance to mull it over. "It was a _good night_ \-- let's keep it that way."  
  
The sudden drop of weight from his arms did not alleviate the nerves in his stomach. Arthur settled his hands on his hips, at a loss of what else to do if not to carry her, and looked down at his daughter, spitting venom at her mother's grip on her arm.  
  
"Hey," Arthur started, pushing his hand through the tendrils of sleek yellow hair, forcing her attention on him. "I'll see you Sunday, okay, Peanut? Don't give your mama too much grief 'til then."  
  
"No promises on that, I know," Joss muttered, pulling Carrie behind her as she shifted out into the aisle to stand in front of Arthur. Behind her back, he saw the girl being pulled into Keith's arms, forced to take the begonias. She looked awkward there. Too big against his frame and not an iota of the warmth in his hold on her. _Give her back to me, this is how a real man carries a little girl._  
  
"Still mad at you," Joss said quietly, thinning her lips out. "And my bank account stays as is."  
  
Dancing the line of amusement and dull ache, Arthur scoffed.  
  
"Still mad at _you,"_ he retorted. "My throat still hurts."  
  
"Well ... I'm sorry about that. Get some cough drops," she said weakly.  
  
Giving him a once over, she turned to the pair still in the seats. Arthur saw that his mother was more invested in the paper program than the domestic quarrel, thankfully.  
  
Keith stepped out to join his new lover, clutching Carrie in a semi-vice grip, forcing her arms around his neck. She held a bouquet of red and purple in each hand.  
  
"Was good seeing you again, Arthur," he said, smiling; pleasant and casual as though he wasn't stealing away the only think Arthur cared to bring home.  
  
Arthur nodded anyway in acknowledgement.  
  
He'd never imagined it before, although the logistics were clear; seeing the mental image coming to fruition of Joss and Carrie walking away from him, accompanied by a man that wasn't the designated husband and father he imagined himself to be for them, seared into his brain as they disappeared into the sea of attendees.  
  
He helped his mother up, trying to not look so shattered.  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _The first time they had sex, Arthur laughed and cried in an amalgamation that Joss both expected and cherished.  
_  
 _She found him in the shoe closet of the master bedroom, seemingly numb to both the bombastic vibrations of Johnny Cash's warbling ring of fire a floor below them, and the repercussions of if anyone besides Joss was to find him in a closet in a house that was not his.  
_  
 _ **"There** you are," she said, pushing the slats open further. "Was worried you'd bugged out when I wasn't looking."  
_  
 _Arthur's eyes shifted languidly to the hem of her checkered skirt. He'd dipped out of her vision in the party downstairs just as polaroids from last night's show were being passed around. It was with some guilt she only realized he was gone when she moved out of the social circle to show him a picture of her in her nurse's costume, a good fifteen minutes into the activity.  
_  
 _"You gonna talk to me or do I have to sit down in the closet with you?"  
_  
 _Despite the tenacious shaking of his head, Joss pushed some old coats out of the way anyway. Soaked in moonlight from a nearby window, only covered by a thin doily curtain, Joss heard Arthur hiss and felt his kneecaps wriggling under her backside, making her scoot further up on his being.  
_  
 _A slat in the closet door shone on his mossy eyes, teeming with lack of credence. The weight of her in his lap, warming his front with her touch. Her breath wasn't pleasant -- he'd seen her down two glass bottles of Dr. Pepper since they arrived -- but it was warm and he wouldn't deny that for himself.  
_  
 _It was the closest they'd dared to be so far.  
_  
 _She danced two dainty fingers along his old shirt, scorching him where the pad met the skin of his collarbone.  
_  
 _"You wanna tell me what's wrong, Artie? I'm not gonna go down and enjoy myself while my boyfriend cries into some coats."  
_  
 _The heat of long-neglected physical touch flared the nerves in his neck, tinging it pink in the little slits she could see. He stared at her still.  
_  
 _"... Ru ..." He faltered, lip trembling. "... Rudy Paulson."  
_  
 _"What about Rudy?"  
_  
 _"... I -- she's here. She shouldn't be here, she ... she just had a baby."  
_  
 _"What, she can't have fun just because she had a baby?"  
_  
 _A nail scratched against the lobe of his ear as it searced for a stray curl. His heart thudded madly, almost painfully like a jackhammer under his vest.  
_  
 _He jutted his jaw out, biting his tongue for emotional leverage as Joss leaned closer to him. Curved dimpled flashed and then faded out to black as the slats trailed along her tinted skin. Silently he questioned if it was just Dr. Pepper in her drink or something more potent.  
_  
 _"What if we have a baby?" she questioned. "Does that mean we can't have nights out?"  
_  
 _ **Who said anything about babies?**  
_  
 _"I ... I ..."  
_  
 _"Arthur ..." A patch of Joss' exposed skin was moist, acutely alerting him of his own unsteady breaths. The nail scraping his hair moved down to stroke his cheek, and he wanted to be pathetic, wanted to nuzzle into it and mewl like some desperate kitten. "... do you want me to keep touching you?"  
_  
 _"I ... Joss, we're ... we -- we're in ..." She rocked forward against him, emitting a high whine of certain death as he felt the heat of her panties mesh against his thigh. "-- we're ... we're in Whitney Dickson's house."  
_  
 _"Oh, fuck Whitney. I don't care about her," Joss scoffed. Despite her relative calm, Arthur could see her high cheeks tinging red at the sensitive contact, and he knew with some horror that she could feel the fabric under her shift. He was hard and ashamed of himself. "She hates me anyway, what difference would it make? I told them the party should've been at my house."  
_  
 _She bucked her hips again, agonizingly slow, and tugged at his collar, pulling herself closer to him. Stuffy breaths intermixed as Arthur felt like a hapless ragdoll, filled with sand.  
_  
 _"Maybe if we were in my house, we could be doing this in my bed, instead of here."  
_  
 _ **"... Fuck."**  
_  
 _Her lips were on his with no time to hesitate or resist. When her chest found refuge on his own, he knew he didn't want to resist.  
_  
 _She was sweet, as sweet as five hazy months that kept him in pantomime. A disorienting mess of a man in desperate need of nose nuzzling and bumping shoulders at work. Dancing in their living rooms to the newest Beatles records and in desperate, pitiful need of her body on his in one way or another as they watched movies on the couch.  
_  
 _This side of her, the side that ached his lips and sucked at his tongue and made lewd noises ... he'd never seen her. Her lips, peachy and wet, thinned into a grin as she palmed the stony center of Arthur's trousers. He gasped into her mouth, his breath hitching into a whine.  
_  
 _His eyes closed just as the slats behind her were slammed shut, protecting them in pseudo-mystery. All rational brain activity ceased as her hand moved up the length of his trousers, and Arthur thought he was going to die. The heat of fabric on his skin was reaching an intolerable level.  
_  
 _The party downstairs still vibrated the floorboards. His heartbeat thrummed violently in his ears. Johnny Cash was still singing about walking the line. But for the two occupants of the upstairs bedroom, as Joss pulled herself back and blue eyes rested on green, walking their own line between delicacy and indecent instinct, the entire world came to a standstill.  
_  
 _"You're so pretty, Arthur."  
_  
 _"I ... you, too," he replied weakly, staving off an urge to slam his head against the wall. An avalanche of trembles would wrack his whole body if he even attempted it.  
_  
 _"Do you want me to keep touching you?"  
_  
 _Her voice had dropped to a husky murmur -- one he was unaccustomed to. There was nothing snappy or jaunty in her that he had grown used to. Had he not known her better, had his head not been reduced to electric sparks, he might've concluded she was as needy as he was.  
_  
 _"Do you wanna touch me?"  
_  
 _"... Y -- I ..." He swallowed hard, tears brimming in his eyes like a pathetically horny boy. This was never supposed to be his life. This was too good for people named Arthur Fleck. "... D -- d'you want me to?"  
_  
 _"I want you to touch me."  
_  
 _There was no better sound, none more dangerous anywhere. An electric zeal coursed through the fist that Joss was unfurling in her delicate hand, bringing two of his fingers to her mouth. It viscerally frightened him, how Joss looked so innocent and petite while sucking on two fingers. The over-sensitized part of his brain abandoned his defense. She was sliding her tongue between his middle and pointer finger, inelegantly scraping them between her teeth. At the middle knuckles, he felt air and puffy, sticky lips. He was hypnotized to her machinations.  
_  
 _The contact with chilled air stimulated his nerves. When she pulled his hand away, caressing his scratchy palm with her thumb, his two fingers were wet. His whole arm was wired, ready to be bent and pulled at her will. Weightless and stone-heavy all at once.  
_  
 _She guided him under the slip of her plaid skirt, the both of them erupting in high gasps when she slipped his brutish hand in the fragile fabric of her underwear. Before his vision spotted with white, his senses overtaken with a musty smell and the tinge of unruly hair and soft, **soft** (god, she was so **soft)** skin, he believed he saw her underwear patterned with daisies.  
_  
 _He was going to go insane.  
_  
 _"Oh, god, Art ..."  
_  
 _As his fingers danced inexpertly along her inner muscles, encouraged to push past the elastic ring of resistance, Joss brought her body down to rest against his, pushing her nose into the crook of his shoulder. Such a position trapped his hand to keep his fingers inside of her, and the rumble of high mewls she gave encouraged his nervous pace to stay as it was.  
_  
 _"Are you real?" he found himself asking, pushed past the point of nervous laughter and on the verge of crying. She nuzzled her nose into his neck, lifting her body off of his lap slightly to alleviate the vice grip on his hand. Frantic to continue, he moved his fingers to accidentally scrape along her inner wall, bringing out a sharp gasp.  
_  
 _He didn't want it to end. He didn't ever want her to end.  
_  
 _"Do you want me to be?" she responded, heating his neck with a warm breath. "Oh, god, Arthur ... Arthur ..."  
_  
 _Feeling bouyant and useless, his other hand took hold of the nape of her exposed neck. Her hair was still pinned and weaved into a braided crown from the show just hours earlier. To have one hand cradling her against him, while the other was wedged in her tight warm pussy ...  
_  
 _ **You're real and you make me real, at least I think I'm real, thank god and the devil for making you real**  
_  
 _"Stop ... stop, I'm gonna --"  
_  
 _He retracted from her as though he'd been burned in her succulent heat.  
_  
 _"Did I hurt you?" he asked, his voice shooting up in volume, choked by the heartbeat carving its way into the airways of his throat. "Did I --?"  
_  
 _"No, no, you didn't," she sighed, pulling away from him. "I wanna fuck you so bad, Art, I --"  
_  
 ** _"No."  
_**  
 _She'd already undone the leather of his belt notch by the time the heat of the word caught up to her. In the light of the slats soaking their eyes, she looked at him.  
_  
 _"No?" she questioned, trying hard not to sound offended.  
_  
 _"I ... I --" He took in a breath. He'd been holding his breath for so long. "I w -- wanna make love to you. Properly. Not ... not in a closet."  
_  
 _Her grip on his belt did not waver. He wondered if she could feel the blazing heat through the fabric of his trousers, and that was why she was turning her mouth up in a half-curved smirk.  
_  
 _"What about making love to a blonde?" she questioned. "And fucking a brunette in the meantime?"  
_  
 _ **Oh, god.**  
_  
 _Bunching up her skirt at the sides, Joss forced her panties down and over each knee as she leaned in and pecked gently at his jawline. He was sweating. Did she mind? Did she mind that his legs were shaking? Or that his breathing was jutting out of him? The heartbeat beneath his skin that she sucked at, just at the jugular, alerted him to his own waning lucidity.  
_  
 _"Rudy Paulson is a brunette, do you wanna fuck her?" she asked sweetly. "Do you wanna fuck Rudy?"  
_  
 _"I ... no." Downstairs, the muffle of voices seemed as though they were submerged in water. If an atom bomb dropped on the house, Arthur wouldn't notice until they were cast to the wind. His heartbeat was so loud in his ears, the sound of his belt buckle loosening eerie and hypnotic. "I ... I wanna fuck you."  
_  
 _"You sure?"  
_  
 _They were close enough to share the very air, their breaths enriching each other.  
_  
 _"You want me to pull your cock out?"  
_  
 _"I -- Joss ..." His heart deflated as his mind came back to defense. "... J -- Joss, I don't ... I don't have a condom."  
_  
 _"Don't need one," she said quickly. "I'm on the pill."  
_  
 _He nodded dumbly in acknowledgement. His brain utterly betrayed him to the mercy of physical touch. The warmth of Joss' fingers tugging his messy erection to the surface almost devastated his restraint. He wanted to grab her. He wanted to fuck her and tell her he loved her. He wanted ... he ... wanted ...  
_  
 _The head of Arthur's cock prodding at her slick labia brought out an animal grunt from him, and a hearty, girlish giggle from her. His head fell against the wall that supported him, letting her guide. His entire body was numb where it wasn't immediately of use. Every pulse and touch and warm air brushing against his cock made him whimper.  
_  
 _She had to grab him to bring him inside of her, suffocating him in pillowy warmth. He took in a shaking breath like he'd been stabbed, and tried to focus his fleeting attention on her, **her, Joss, Jocelyn, she's my girlfriend, my real girlfriend, oh fuck, I love her, I love you, please fuck me**  
_  
 _"You feel s-o good," Arthur gasped, his breath hitching and knee jerking at the quick rocking motion of her hips. It pushed him further into the wall.  
_  
 _ **"God,** yeah." Joss' panting was frenzied. Lightning bolts of young excitement cracked through her facade of experience. He knew she had some. He didn't want to think about it. "Oh, Arthur ... **Arthur ..."**  
_  
 _"Yeah ... Joss ..."  
_  
 _The suctioning of his length in her scorched heat rendered him incoherent. His vision was spotting white, forcing his legs closer to his being and pulling her into him. Her hands rested on his vest, slinking underneath to his button-up shirt, utterly ruined with sweat.  
_  
 _"You think Rudy Paulson could do this?" she huffed.  
_  
 _A laugh, intermixed with her own. Uninvited and breaking his mounting confidence. Joss' frantic grinding pace slowed to a subdued hip roll, controlling the obscene sounds that might attract unwanted attention from below them. She watched him laugh without fear or unease. The first person besides his mother to give him such mercy.  
_  
 _A laugh and a cry. He dragged his arm up to pull her closer.  
_  
 _"Arthur ..." she continued, needy and high as her hips rolled deliciously, almost oblivious to the raucous, sobbing laughter in her ear. "You feel so good, Arthur ... you feel so good, honey ..."  
_  
 _A collection of shoes dug into his leg. He was going numb from the sitting position and her added weight on top of him. If they weren't careful, the hat boxes on the shelf above him would crash right on them, swallowing her into imagination again.  
_  
 _He was in ecstasy.  
_  
 _ **"Arthur --"** she hissed, running her hips faster along his own. The grip she's secured on the back of his neck tightened, and when she squeezed around him, he was sure he was going to die. **"Arthur! Fuck!"**  
_  
 _"Fuck, Joss, I'm ... g -- I'm gonna --"  
_  
 _The frenetic assault of her clit on the soft, bony skin of his pelvis pushed her over the edge. Arthur's legs spasmed when he spilled over inside of her, giggling and crying, physically unable to oppose the open-mouthed kiss Joss caught him in, mid-gasp.  
_  
 _He didn't know if it had been four minutes or a full hour. It shocked the Fleckness in him that the feeling of Joss leaning against him, stroking his neck as his hand pawed at her hair again, made him not care.  
_  
 _"We should bounce," Joss said after some time, once his trembling receded, cock stuffed back in his trousers. "Whitney can kill me tomorrow, but I'm hungry."  
_  
 _He laughed. She was always hungry.  
_  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur sat in the bathtub for an indecipherable amount of time. The only indication of the hours seeping by was the pruning of pink fingers, and the water's temperature cooking from a lobster boil to lukewarm and murky.  
  
It'd be a lot easier to tell time with a little girl to put to bed. To lay in bed with and read a story to. To ... to tell her to brush her teeth, it's ten o'clock, to put on her pajamas ...  
  
This was the second week in a row he'd missed Murray Franklin. His own sense of structure was cast to the wind without her. It didn't matter much anyway, he'd given his mother her sleeping tablets once they'd gotten home, but the lack of routine on off-weeks threw him through a loop.  
  
He only brought himself out when the phone rang for the third time within an hour. A trail of water followed him from the bathroom as he'd thrown on his skivvies and loose pajama bottoms. Beads of water and perspiration, completely defeating the purpose of the bath, pooled at his feet around the phone.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
 _"Do you wanna come over on Wednesday?"  
_  
His brows furrowed in contemplation.  
  
"Jocelyn?"  
  
There was a sigh over the phone, overtired and completely condescending. He hated how used to it he had become.  
  
 _"No, it's the fairy godmother. How do you not know my voice after fifteen years?"_  
  
"Joss, what do you _want?"_ he asked, unhappy with the over-familiarity of the verbal assault. He ran a hand over his face. "My mom's trying to sleep, y'know."  
  
 _"I asked if you wanted to come over on Wednesday."  
_  
"... Why?"  
  
 _"We want the nursery done by Wednesday, but one of Keith's sons has a high fever and he's driving out to Weehawken to stay at the hospital with him. I need the dresser done to put the baby's_ _clothes in."  
_  
He mulled this over carefully in his brain, unhappy with the tight feeling it put in his frontal lobe.  
  
"Wouldn't it offend him that his pregnant girlfriend is asking her ex-husband to build a dresser for his kid?"  
  
 _"He doesn't mind,"_ Joss said quickly. _"If he does, he can get over himself. It's my house and you're my ex-husband. I can talk to you if I want."  
_  
"Yeah, your _ex_ -husband," he clipped. Four years did not take the edge off the added syllable. He hated it still. "Why are you asking me for help?"  
  
 _"Well you were a carpenter when we were first married. And you built Carrie's crib when I was pregnant with her."  
_  
"That was eight years ago," he stated plainly, cradling the phone in between his shoulder and cheek as his hands wrung out the ends of his sopping hair. "I was only a carpenter for eleven months."  
  
 ** _"Do you wanna see Carrie or not?"  
_**  
"I never said I wouldn't do it," he said, snappier than he'd intended. As if he could pass up the request. "So Carrie will be there but Keith won't?"  
  
 _"You think I'm gonna let her to to the hospital with him? She's helping me paint the last wall in the nursery."  
_  
He nodded slowly, unsure of whom he was reassuring. The pressure in his brain loosened.  
  
"... I have a gig on Wednesday until four. Can we push it off to Thursday?"  
  
 _"I can do Thursday."  
_  
"Okay then, I'll ... see you guys then. Is ... is Carrie still up?"  
  
 _"Arthur, it's eleven-thirty. Her last day of school is tomorrow."  
_  
His heart seized, though not as painful as it had been under similar circumstances four years ago. He drew in a deep breath.  
  
"... Could you tell her hi and I love her if she's still up?"  
  
 _"I'll pass on the message when I wake her up tomorrow. Goodnight, Arthur."  
_  
The dial clicked and stayed buzzing in his ear, long after he set the phone back on its hook.  
  
Thursday. He sighed.


	17. AUTHOR'S NOTE

So my tumblr account got terminated, without warning or reason and without having violated any guidelines :)))

I originally wanted to push a chapter out by tomorrow evening for a Christmas present, but I'm beside myself with grief and irritation. It's 3:00 AM on Christmas and I lost communication with two of my closest internet friends for no reason that is being explained to me.

My Instagram socials are @unoriginal_ayers and @king.of.the.conchords if anybody wants to follow me on there until I can get my tumblr up and running (tumblr was where I communicated story ideas with my muse and friend @ladyfluff, I highly recommend you check out their works, I know they're very proud of their Loki fics). And anybody that followed me on tumblr, do not hesitate to reach out on here because I don't want anybody thinking I abandoned them.

I'll try to get a chapter out whenever I can. I pray it's within the week because my stomach literally hurts with frustration right now. Merry Christmas.


	18. Mom's House

_Was it shameful for Arthur that he couldn't afford a proper tool box and screwdriver after putting his last $5.50 on a second-hand baby crib?  
_  
 _More than a little, but a butter knife got the job done.  
_  
 _He gave the knife a final few twists between his fingers, relieving the ache in his joints as the quasi-instrument was set on the floor. On one end of the interior headboard, Bambi stared at him, grinning happily and dumbly. On the other end of the headboard, the foot end, Thumper did the same, although years of ill-use left him without any paint left on his little foot.  
_  
 _It was old but it was sturdy, as suggested when Arthur grabbed two bits of white wood and shook them for good measure, feeling resistance. Laverne, the test subject and their pseudo-baby since New Years Day of '69, licked her paw. She was irate, but too riddled with arthritis to attempt an escape from the wooden prison, instead voicing her protests with incremented low-range mewls and weakly pawing at Arthur's finger knuckles.  
_  
 _He sat back, feeling proud. Not every first-time father could say they put their baby's crib together by hand. The man who helped him disassemble it and load everything into the back of the station wagon and showered him with congratulations gave him not one iota of information regarding re-assembly. He'd been sitting on the ground for close to four hours.  
_  
 _"Hey, hon? Come look at this!" he called.  
_  
 _The floorboards ached under the weight of her walk. Looking at the doorway to his left, he saw her distended, denim-covered belly before he saw the rest of her. That had taken some getting used to.  
_  
 _A pleased grin spread across her face, thinning her lips, as she set her eyes on the crib.  
_  
 _"Great," she said simply. "Now we just need to wash it."  
_  
 _"No, **I'll** wash it," Arthur said, beginning to stand. "You rest."  
_  
 _"Arthur."  
_  
 _"Honey, it'll be done in no time --"  
_  
 _"Which is why **I** should do it."  
_  
 _"Jocelyn Fleck," he warned, lifting an eyebrow. As the only outside party Jocelyn allowed the privilege whenever he wanted, he stroked a hand from the permanently painful dip of her concave spine to the front pocket of her overalls, where an oblong lump had formed. "Doctor Armstrong said you need to be off your feet for as much as you can help it 'til your induction date. I'd like to take her word for it."  
_  
 _"I could not help it," she shot back, entwining her fingers around his, removing the hand from her belly. "I want you to eat, Mr. Fleck."  
_  
 _He rolled his eyes at this. He was a grown man, capable of making his own food. Unlike his coworkers, he was not in need of a fussy wife to pack his lunches every day and make sure he would sit down and eat.  
_  
 _Especially not a wife who was eight months pregnant. He was not going to will himself to eat before she did.  
_  
 _Testily, he brought their entwined hands up to his view, pressing a soft kiss to a swollen digit. The poor dear -- so overstuffed with water and baby and stress, she had to either keep her wedding ring off until after birth or have it manually cut off.  
_  
 _It was a closely-guarded secret tucked into his pocket that he loved her swollen hands. Her swollen thighs, her belly. Everything. It made for interesting sensations in innocent manipulations or otherwise.  
_  
 _"I will eat if you get in bed and lay down," he considered.  
_  
 _"You'd better," she said, surrendering to impulse as her cheery dimples settled like cherries on her cheekbones, allowing him to carry their hands around in an airy dance. "I slaved away for a whole ten minutes over those leftovers for you. You'd better appreciate my magnificent cooking over that pre-packaged chicken."  
_  
 _"That is ten minutes more than you needed to be on your feet," he said, pulling her to sit on her end of the bed. "We already ran a risk today going out for the crib. Have you eaten today, too?"  
_  
 _"I do not need to eat."  
_  
 _"Jocelyn --"  
_  
 _"Arthur!" she exclaimed. He sighed and brought both puffy hands into his delicate grasp. She couldn't sit with her legs closed anymore and the bed groaned under her weight. It enabled him to kneel between her legs. "The woman at the yard sale thought I was carrying twins. I am **huge!"**  
_  
 _"Honey, you have a condition -- you gained water weight because of your blood pressure. The baby cannot consume straight water for three weeks. Can you, little one?"  
_  
 _A cracked kiss was placed on the little mound where Joss' front pocket was. Joss smiled down at the sight, fighting off a wince at the pinch of skin as her husband set his forehead against her belly, right where the baby's broadened cranium was in her effort to turn over. Two peas in a moldy pod.  
_  
 _"I built you your crib today," he said quietly, as though honing in on the baby's ears directly. "Since Mama said she doesn't want you sleeping in our bed."  
_  
 _"Arthur, I tossed and turned all night when I still had the ability to," Joss cut through. "I don't want to roll over and squish her."  
_  
 _"You won't have to worry, I'll steal the baby all to myself for cuddling," he smiled. If she wasn't so stressed, and if the baby didn't elbow her at Arthur's beck and call, Joss might have swooned. "You hungry in there, baby? Do you want Mama to eat?"  
_  
 _"She's asleep, for once. My rocking puts her to sleep."  
_  
 _The audible pop of Arthur's knees as he stood up, using Joss' thighs for leverage, made her flinch in sympathy. He stared down at her, arms crossed, a playful grin carving the stress wrinkles into his face. How badly did she want to pull him down and kiss along every one, permanently indenting them and committing them to memory under the pads of her waterlogged fingers.  
_  
 _"You're gonna be very surprised when that baby pops out and **she** is actually a **boy,"** Arthur said.  
_  
 _"Well I have a fifty-fifty shot and I think it's a girl. A daddy's girl."  
_  
 _He nodded, not entirely convinced in one side of the argument or the other, but to fathom it ... Arthur Fleck, a girl-dad ... his heart did a rapid flutter, a butterfly's shuddering wings that forced his arms into a light tremble.  
_  
 _"With any luck, she'll look like her daddy, too," Joss added, sappily turning her eyes up to him, indelible as they were. "Your curly brown hair, she'll be a regular Judy Garland."  
_  
 _Too sickly sweet. He tried to pray strictly for ten fingers and ten toes, as of late.  
_  
 _"I got a plate made for you in the kitchen," Joss said. "Please tell me you'll eat at least half."  
_  
 _"When we get a crib mattress, I will," he joked, not entirely convincing himself of its lack of finality. Still so, so much left to buy, and on Joss' paid internship, no less. Fucking hell, they still needed a changing mat, a diaper bag, a stroller ... they needed to invest in bottles ...  
_  
 _"Arthur ... we have family who will be **happy** to help out. She has grandparents who would love to spoil her."  
  
She had a grandfather who wanted to seize Arthur by the neck for putting his only daughter in such a sordid state, nearly propelling her into single motherhood.  
_  
 _"... I'm the **father** here," he stressed, sitting down next to her. The inflection of his tone, the way his prodding finger caved in on itself as it pushed into his chest ... she was going to cry. Again. "I should be providing for my pregnant wife."  
_  
 _"Didn't we agree that you'd spend the first few months taking care of the baby? That it'd help your brain calm down? Hey, look at me."  
_  
 _It wasn't the most intimate of positions, and the past few months of undue stress curved their foreheads with more wrinkles than what was becoming of two twenty-somethings, but Joss craned her body just enough to rest their heads together, stroking the nape of his neck with her thumb. A dainty smile pushed into the corner of one lip and disappeared when her nose rubbed against his.  
_  
 _"It's **not** your fault you lost you got laid off," she said. "I didn't like you working at those places anyway. Those carpenter bosses were assholes and that factory should be shut down for safety violations. How could you play patty-cake with the baby if you lost your fingers?"  
_  
 _He laughed once, watery and unsure of the sound of it. She'd do herself a lot of good, taking her kindness to someone who could give her better structure. If fate would have it, he would work himself through three jobs and into the ground to give her -- her, them -- the life he wanted for them. A one-bedroom was not good enough. Not for his kid.  
_  
 _She smiled at him anyway, despite the forming hair headache from her ponytail and the baby elbowing her stomach and the mounting fear of everything still left to buy. Three weeks loomed overhead like the smell of dust after rain, reminding them of the baby's imminence every time one of them went to the fridge and was ambushed with the sight of the lively ultrasound print.  
_  
 _"We'll be okay, okay?" she murmured, not releasing him. "We'll make sure the baby is okay. And right now, the baby wants you to eat."  
_  
 _"Will you eat if I eat, and please rest, for god's sake?"  
_  
 _She leaned back on her palms. It was uncomfortable, and a spring in the mattress that always dug into her thigh was now prodding into the dimple of her right hand. Still, she looked as though she'd gotten her way, and smiled at him.  
_  
 _"I think we could work with that."  
_  
This new baby had a nice room.  
  
It was a step above its sister's nursery in that it was actually a _room,_ and not a crib and changing table shoved in the corner of its parents' bedroom. More to the point, _this_ room had shelves with meticulously arranged books and toys on display, and a giraffe statue keeping vigil over an expensive-looking cedar crib. Beige carpeting. A cushy chair in one corner and framed ultrasound photos on the walls, instead of in kitchen cabinets or tacked up with souvenir fridge magnets from Missouri.  
  
Did that stroke Arthur's inadequacy if he thought over it for too long? A little. Joss had always wanted a pink nursery (this was butter cookie yellow, he remembered, courtesy of Carrie's affinity for the name) with dolls and a dresser for the overflow of clothes they'd been gifted.  
  
But she was _happy,_ dammit. At least as far as he could gauge by how her shoulders shimmied in her black shirt, a Capri-sun in one hand and a dripping paint brush in the other. Her hair was tucked securely in a black beanie, although one ear was on display and her bare legs had been victimized in the oily carnage.  
  
He smirked and tightened another screw into a top drawer, feeling rife with nostalgia. She was gonna be wired with sugar on those overgrown juice boxes, and seeing him in her mother's home had added to her zeal.  
"How was your last day of school, Peanut?" he asked.  
  
"It was good."  
  
"What did you do?"  
  
"Mrs. Gilby gave us all popsicles -- I got an orange one, 'cause she knows that's my favorite color. And we took pictures as a class, and then she wheeled in the TV so we could watch Willy Wonka. Everyone except me got scared at the tunnel scene."  
  
"Everyone except you?" he humored, pushing up on his knees to steady a board in place between his hip and the mostly-finished dresser. It had been a couple hours and his behind was getting numb anyway.  
  
"I'm not scared of _anything,"_ she concluded.  
  
"Not anything? Well I'll remember that the next time you yell at me to kill the spiders you find in the bathroom."  
  
"I don't want you to _kill_ them," she exaggerated, taking care to squash down a fat glob of yellow paint with her brush. "Just throw them out the window."  
  
They shared a smile from either side of the room. For a while it had been just them, as Joss (against Arthur's wishes) lifted the finished drawers up and out to the living room to load them with clothes. Whatever acceptance she had of him requesting to do things for her in her first pregnancy evaded her now.  
  
For being so cautiously optimistic this time around, she damn well was lax doing things she shouldn't have been. It didn't matter how many times he readily offered to carry the drawers for her.  
  
It made him question how much aid Keith was offering to her, since he had two kids of his own that he saw only sparsely, and how this new one was any different. He kept this to himself, wary of her temper as of late.  
The click-clacking of brown kitten heels alerted her entrance. Instantly he was up, abandoning the half-finished top drawer to relieve her of the wooden crate burdening her slightly protruding belly.  
  
"Carrie Frances, put some pants on," she instructed. Out of his side-eye, he saw the mock-offense in the girl's face.  
  
"It's _summer,_ Mom!" she exclaimed, forcing him to hide a smile. "And it's just you and Daddy here."  
  
"Well go get some old shorts!" Joss shot back. After an _"ugh,"_ the girl dropped her brush in the stained can and rushed off. "And don't get paint in your room, Carrie, I mean it!"  
  
A whip of anxiety pushed the smile down, and Arthur tried hard to focus strictly on getting the drawer in a sturdy place. At his vantage point, if he bothered to pay attention, he could see the cutoff between sun-drenched legs and derelict white lines peeking out of her black shorts. She was a bit more subdued in her choice of wear to show any cleavage, donning a stretchy red tank top that hung off her shoulders and gave him access to notice her collarbones were retaining some weight as her breasts got bigger.  
  
The great Hand of God Almighty would surely strike him down for looking for what she would deem a questionable amount of time. A curvy hip (they'd never gone down to size after she had Carrie, and he silently thanked every god out there for that) rested against the side of the dresser. He took in a steadying breath and curled his fingers to tighten a screw into a wooden slat. _One two three, in, one two three, out. Fuck, she's still sexy_  
  
A nail dragged across the top paneling.  
  
"This is a good job you did," she considered. A twinge of inevitable hurt spiked through him. Her tone suggested more surprise at the job well done than she'd expected.  
  
He looked up at her from his knelt position, and rested his palms on his thighs. He knew he looked pathetic, tired; a hapless dog at her mercy. It was ground instinct, drilled into the innate impulses over eleven years together.  
"If you ever need the favor returned," she started, "Keith is pretty good at unclogging sink drains."  
  
 _And clogging pipes, apparently_  
  
He went back to finishing the last drawer, swearing lightly under his breath as his thumb got pinched in his meticulous folding act.  
  
"Does Keith really know I'm here?" he questioned. "Or are you planning on telling him I came in so he can beat me up later?"  
  
"Arthur, when and why would I do that?"  
  
"Because I know you," he quipped.  
  
It was not out of the realm of possibility. Not in this city, and not with Jocelyn's connections, nor the behavior he never thought he would see from his petite, wily little wife. It was everything he'd come to expect from his ex-wife.  
  
He would not and could not let her in on the fact that he kept his .38 in his jacket, just in case.  
  
"The dresser's finished."  
  
He gave the sides a quick tug of affirmation, satisfied by their resistance.  
  
"After we move it in place and Carrie gets cleaned off, do you wanna stay for dinner?"  
  
He shook his head. Desperately he wanted to, but his mother couldn't just lay in bed all day. He was gone long enough as it was and he would guilt himself to no end for leaving her alone. The line in the sand was already being blurred between what was and was not appropriate with his ex-wife.  
  
"Joss, I -- I think --"  
  
"I think Carrie wants you to stay for dinner." A stilled beating of his heart was distracted by her clearing her throat. "I would _like_ you to stay for dinner."  
  
His head tilted up. There was no defiant will when the opposing side enabled him to spend a few extra hours with his child.  
  
"What are you making?" he found himself asking, unable to stop himself.  
  
"Well I put out two strip steaks for me and Carrie, but she doesn't need a whole ten ounces. I'm sure she'll want to share with you anyway."  
  
"She could probably eat a whole ten ounces and then some if we tested her." Groaning, feeling the blood rush back to his legs as he stood, he added, "Do you have anything less exotic?"  
  
"Arthur, it's just a steak," Joss reasoned, clacking her nails against the old, sleek wood. "It's not your baby this time. I don't need you starving."  
  
 _Not my kid yet here I am building furniture for it when I could be at home, resting_  
  
"It's less out of obligation for your baby ..." he said softly "... and more that my medication triggers my gag reflex. My taste buds are dull. I can't eat anything too exciting without throwing up."  
  
"You and me both," she muttered. With a dramatic sigh, as if to signify, _look how I'm going out of my way for you,_ she considered, "I might have some Spanish rice. Only takes ten minutes to make."  
  
Was he comfortable with it? No. He did not enjoy the thought of sitting in a kitchen that was worth more than what he earned in six months, eating food that would inevitably be seen later in the night, with the woman who forced the ring off his finger and set him on a lower peg of dependability. Being _parents_ did not constitute being _friends._ She'd let him know that long ago.  
  
"Alright," he said anyway, won over by the bouncy girl who made her way back into the nursery.  
  
She donned a pair of loose grey shorts now, and he saw the playful bruises scattered along the length of her pale legs like gross constellations, though displaying them seemed to not bother her at all. She looked at him as plainly as though he'd asked for the time.  
  
Joss crossed the threshold between them to occupy herself with the discarded brush. Fat dollops of yellow paint dropped onto the ruined trash bag its old can sat on to protect the carpet.  
  
"Carrie, your daddy's gonna stay for dinner," she said, reaching up to evenly slather the areas out of her daughter's reach. "Do you wanna set a plate for him, pretty please?"  
  
 _"Yes!"_ Carrie exclaimed, pushing her spindly body into the air for one quick hop before disappearing from their sight again. Arthur laughed, feeling the knot of near-permanent unease loosen. He hoped that would allow him the luxury of a decent meal.  
  
"You wanna get me the footstool from the kitchen, Mr. Fleck?" Joss asked, noticing his brief lethargy, the way his eyes lingered on the door.  
  
The name snapped him out of his reverie, a lightning bolt of semi-hurt. Mr. Fleck in Jocelyn's vocabulary was younger, more protective; the man who played the ukulele for her at 1:30 AM in their bouts of insomnia and competitively scoured thousand-piece puzzle boxes in the race for that one specific piece.  
  
He hadn't been Mr. Fleck in a long time. Not for her anyway.  
  
"... I don't know my way around your house," he argued weakly, too shocked to argue against the pet name. _Your house. This could've been our house but it's your house._  
  
"Carrie can get it for you," she said flatly, not bothering to look back at him again as a thin stripe of yellow stretched out of its bed and assaulted the white wall, making itself an anomaly. "She uses it to sneak cookies behind my back ..."  
  
He found himself complying, unsure of the spell she put under him, nor why he hadn't yet found the ability to say no in her pregnant state. Maybe it was the Fleck part of his brain. He couldn't spread joy and laughter if he was to deny her -- nor if she mauled him for saying no.  
  
A skylight in the room assaulted his eyes when he stepped into the second story walkway. It looked to be getting semi-dark soon, as indicated by the way the sky was brush-stroked into great lines of orange and blue hues, throwing shadows to the trees that shrouded the sun into a half-lidded eye, looking down at his person.  
  
There wasn't a scrap of a building in sight. This was Gotham City by name association only.  
  
The sunset and the shaded orbs hanging from the ceiling cast a light on the mural of the right wall -- an old colonial ship pulling into a lively harbor. He didn't know geography nor much history -- they and English class loomed large in threat over his high school diploma -- but it looked nice.  
  
It looked rich, old. As did the twisting black iron of the banister he ran his hand across for grounding. The frigid temperature almost burned him after his hands being stuffed in his pockets for as many minutes.  
  
He jogged leisurely down the stairs, at once fascinated and overwhelmed at the house. Carpeted stairs. Iron banisters.Wood-paneled walls for decoration instead of desperation.  
  
The bottom of the stairs led him to a living room, of which he'd only skimmed over briefly in pursuit of the upstairs nursery.  
  
 _Nursery. Nursery. This could've been my baby. This could've been my house. My life. My wife._  
  
He stopped for a moment to stare, acutely honed in on the sounds of clattering cupboards and dishes in one room and wet paint in the other. The living room had a quasi-forest feel to it. An entire wall to his left was one half sanded bricks, a fireplace tucked in cozily in the middle, the other half a built-in shelf of knick knacks, an expensive-looking record player, and picture frames. The bottom shelf held a TV that'd probably cost Arthur two weeks' worth of paychecks, and a wired game system that sat saliently on the glass coffee table. It forced his attention to the begging of a five-year-old with an approaching birthday; _Daddy, can I please get a 'Tari 2600, I don't want anything else, Mommy doesn't want me playing with it 'cause it's for boys, please, please, pleeeease --  
_  
The one commonality between the Fleck household and the Soucie household seemed to be the photos of the gummy, bug-eyed infant that morphed into a rose-tinted preschooler with each passing frame. Nothing that suggested she had parents, that she hadn't simply fallen from the sky or rooted herself out of the ground. No sign of the tacky family portraits Joss insisted on having done for Mother's Day when Carrie hadn't yet passed the threshold to three years old.  
  
In her eight-year-old, paint splattered form, Carrie walked out from the kitchen on the other side of the wall, bringing his attention to the glass dining table and the china cabinet domineering the centerpiece against the wall. Expensive, probably unused. That seemed like Joss' style.  
  
"Carrie, where's the foot stool?" he asked, remembering the task at hand. He took a hesitating step forward, then another one, a little more confident that his ungainly presence in the house wouldn't shoot him up in flames.  
  
"Your mama said you know where it is."  
  
Carrie pointed to the kitchen as though it answered the question in and of itself, and added with a grin, "Don't tell Mom but I used it to sneak a cookie."  
  
He smiled back and walked over, feeling the pressure in his gut loosen at the expense of a piercing headache.  
  
"She told me you might do that," he said. "Try to hold off 'til dinner time."  
  
"But it was a cranberry crisp!"  
  
He smirked and procured the foot stool, folded between the thin gap of the cabinets. The contours of mahogany _everything_ in the kitchen impressed him enough that the sharp sting of inadequacy receded to a light simmer in his veins. It was a very, _very_ nice house.  
  
Carrie hopped up the stairs ahead of him, bouncy and clearly wired on excitement. She'd not stopped grinning, as far as he could see, since he stepped in the front door and she took aim to hug his waist.  
  
"Carrie, baby," Joss started, giving him an appreciative nod as she unfolded the foot stool, "... go run a bath and get the paint off your leg. We're eating dinner after I get this wall finished."  
  
She nodded and padded her way to Arthur, tugging at the hem of his white shirt. A gleam of light from the uncurtained windows hit her face in a way that gave a superlunary quality to the color of her eyes; a color he might have to see to believe in the outside world -- the clarity of the sky at the highest peak of a mountain.  
  
"D'you wanna wash my hair while I take a bath?" she asked. A blood red heat slapped the high of his cheekbones.  
  
"No, no, no," Joss interjected, craning her body to look at her daughter. "You're a big girl, Carrie, you can bathe yourself. You don't need your daddy to help you -- he's helping me finish the nursery."  
  
Quick enough to evade Carrie's attention, but locking eyes with Arthur, Joss looked between the two of them and turned back to finishing the paint job.  
  
He hated to think what she thought. He didn't want to think what she thought.  
  
Tossing a pointed finger at her mother's back, Carrie exclaimed, _"You made me put on pants for nothing!"_ and rushed out before an argument could come to head. Arthur laughed, not out of the peculiarity of the accusation, but the awkwardness tugging his vocal cords like finely-tuned piano strings.  
  
"Glad that you think it's funny that I'm getting yelled at," Joss said, not bothering to turn around. "For your sake, I'll say that's your condition."  
  
"Joss, she's just joking," he stressed. At a loss of service, Arthur moved to push the dresser against the wall, careful to lift to avoid breaking the dresser's wooden legs.  
  
"Why are you still bathing her?"  
  
"Because --" Quietly he winced, affronted by a splinter wedging in his left ring finger. "-- she asks me to. Because she enjoys it."  
  
"Arthur," she scoffed. "She enjoys a lot of things that she can't have. If I let her do everything she wanted that I disapproved of just because she wanted to do it, she'd have short blue hair and running around with even more fucked up teeth from eating chocolate for lunch."  
  
"Tantalizing," he joked. Though it earned him a sharp eye, he smirked still. "Joss, I'm her _father._ I changed her diapers, I watched her be _pulled out_ of you. I've bathed her since she was born and she _enjoys_ me washing her hair. You want her to use that medicine so bad."  
  
"She's _eight,"_ Joss clipped. The rolling brush in her hand looked more attuned to a blunt weapon when she got that certain glint in her eye. "She's not _three._ You don't need to be seeing her naked."  
  
An argument of _What gives you special right as the mother?_ was stomped down in the low of his chest when he saw the little sprite, as loud as a herd of elephants, rushing past the door.  
  
"We'll talk about it some other time," he concluded.  
  
 _I'm her father.  
_  
 ** _I'm her father.  
_**  
 ~~ ** _I'm her fucking father.  
_**~~  
\- - - -  
  
Carrie twisted the fork in her nimble fingers and chewed on a cut of steak, less zoned in on the taste and more on the two people accompanying her dinnertime.  
  
Seeing her two parents sitting at a dinner table and being civil was as much a rarity as seeing Santa Claus. It could _happen,_ but that didn't mean she saw it often.  
  
To her left, at the head of the table, was her mom, cutting into her strip steak after having helped Carrie cut hers. Her appetite had increased recently, adding two wooden spoons of Spanish rice to an already half-filled plate. Daddy had chalked it up to needing her to feed the baby when she asked him a few days prior. Her claim that her mother should eat less to allow the baby some room was refuted with _"Just let her eat what she wants, Peanut, it's a hard time."_  
  
Her point still stood, but she didn't argue. Her own steak was about the size of her fist and the heaping of rice was well past what her mother said a girl of her age should be eating.  
  
Daddy's plate, sitting across from her own, to the left of her mother's, was nothing but rice. He ate it in slow, light forkfuls, hesitant to meet her over-interested gaze. She knew the game of occupying herself with conversation to get out of a heavy dinner -- she'd learned it from the best.  
  
Christmas of '77, Carrie remembered being the only one to eat, or open presents. Her parents weren't mad at _her,_ and had put in a solid effort to be there as a _quasi-family,_ but she could've choked on the tense atmosphere. They didn't say a word to each other the whole evening, and used Carrie as the messenger from one side of the room to the other. It made the ham and potatoes a lot less appetizing.  
  
At least now Mom was talking. About boring insurance business, maybe, but it beat out the Bach records she often played at dinnertime with her and Keith. She had stopped the daily rotation of who got to choose the dinner music once she announced the baby, claiming it was good for his brain. Carrie stayed quiet but indignant, insistent on blasting ABBA in her room before bedtime.  
  
Mom had been made aware of her sneaking a cookie before the bath, and put a ban on her helping of ice cream before bed, to Daddy's quiet amusement. Teasingly ganging up on her and flushing her cheeks red was a common pastime they could agree on whenever they were together.  
  
If Keith was good for anything, it was sneaking late-night dessert past her mom. In the late nights that he'd pull her out of bed -- frightening her when a sliver of light cast a single strip of face to the shadow of a man -- he would bring her to the kitchen for a late night bowl of ice cream _("I'm older so I get three scoops -- when you turn thirteen you can graduate from one scoop to two")._ If she thought to ask, he would drench the mint chip in a concoction of crushed pecans and rainbow sprinkles.  
  
Lengthy stories of vacations in Brisbane, Australia and petting dolphins at Seaworld would be cut short with unprompted comments about how pretty she was, or how the shoulder pads on her Strawberry Shortcake nightie seemed so stiff and unsuited for such a soft girl. It was her mother's insistence that they kept up on trends, and they were squishy and comfortable at night.  
  
The compliments felt more backhanded than advisory, and left a sour taste in her minty mouth.  
  
Mom was good at delivering backhanded compliments; Carrie loved the term once she learned what it was.  
  
Daddy pushed a few forkfuls of rice onto her plate, not understanding that Mom's house had enough food to feed them rice and steaks for the next month.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Just because Carrie was not typically one to initiate over-affection with her father outside the home, didn't mean she was immune or resistant to it.  
  
Arthur reveled in the sweetness as often as fate would allow.  
  
Watching her practically bouncing down the stairs, her hair slicked back, red and pink and frilly white all over in a Strawberry Shortcake nightgown, he thought he was going to melt. It was miraculous that he stayed in one piece as she insisted on using his thigh as a pillow while she settled herself on the couch with her gaming controller. Her jolting motions aroused his attention for a few seconds at a time, while he fell into an ambient trance of distantly running water and the oft-repeated internal mantra _I love you, you deserve this, you deserve better  
_  
 _My god, you deserve better_  
  
"Carrie, it's eight-thirty," Joss announced, snapping the both of them out of their reveries. "Time for bed."  
  
With a groan, as Arthur came to attention to see a yellow sphere diminishing on the screen upon contact with an oblong pink creature, Carrie threw her hands up.  
  
"Mom, you made me mess up!" she whined. "I only died twice, I was getting really good! I was at level six!"  
  
Consumed in near blackness, save for the strips of orange mood lighting from the dining room and kitchen on one side of her, the neon glow of the TV on the other, Joss rested her hands on her hips in mom-like authority.  
  
 _(A half-hour earlier, Arthur had been startled into sharp coherence at the call of "Carrie! Turn the damn TV down, it's giving me a headache!" She begrudgingly agreed, leaving a faint buzz in Arthur's ear as she grumbled, "She doesn't complain when Mork makes the funny sounds when we watch Mork and Mindy." He wasn't sure whether he should laugh when his heart clenched.)  
_  
"I'll give you 'til nine o'clock," Joss relented. "If you die again before then it's TV off, so you'd better shape up that game play real quick."  
  
Arthur couldn't remember the last time he and Joss sat on a couch together, never mind with their child sandwiched between them.  
  
For the first time in quite a while, as Joss sat herself down with Carrie's feet in her lap and neither girl had their eyes set on him, Arthur felt ... _tolerable._  
  
"Why is your nail polish chipped?" Joss questioned. He looked over to see her holding two little toes in her fingers, pink and polished from her bath.  
  
"Cause the stupid old gym coach made us run the mile on Monday," Carrie huffed, undeterred in her pursuit of the game. The screen flashed a black and green **LEVEL THREE.  
**  
"Mr. Yeowell, the one you've been having problems with?"  
  
Arthur looked down to see her nodding in his lap, her hair pillowy soft as he brushed some strands behind her ear. Her eyes were trained on the TV set.  
  
"I told him that you didn't _need_ to be running a mile," Joss said testily, "... because you passed out on the field last year."  
  
"Well he made me run anyway," she said plainly. "He told me I should get a water bottle if I got dehydrated."  
  
The hem of the nightgown was pushed up to reveal a soft, lanky leg as Joss ran her hand up and down Carrie's calf. Arthur was familiarized with the way Joss shook her head when she was angry, the way her lips curled into a pout as though she'd smelled something terrible. Her chest visible expanded in a quiet heave.  
  
"I'm gonna sue that fucking school," she muttered.  
  
"Mom, _don't,"_ Carrie warned.  
  
"I'm just kidding, baby," she stressed, courteously pulling the nightgown back down to her ankle. "But that's an important lesson for you -- I could do it if I wanted to. There's protection in money."  
  
Arthur's head, already pulsating and jettisoning in too many different directions, making too many shrieking noises, latched onto one thought, only after the memory of a phone call at work about his seven-year-old daughter fainting from heat stroke distanced itself from his rational brain.  
  
 _My gun should meet that son of a bitch_  
  
A low-level whine of defeated music poured out of the TV as Carrie set her gaming stick in her lap, fixing her mother with a tired glare.  
  
"You made me lose," she concluded.  
  
"Well, point is you lost," Joss countered, visibly amused. "Fair is fair. Go get in bed, I'll be in to read in a minute."  
  
For the first time in as many minutes as he'd been sitting there (and it was a _while),_ relegated to her personal cushion, Carrie craned her head to look up at her father, curving her lips up in an apple-cheeked smirk.  
"D'you wanna see my room?"  
  
He didn't know why he said yes, or if he said anything at all. He didn't want to. The vastness of the house, and how comfortable she looked gallivanting around in all the added space and how it seemed to envelop her in its grandeur, made him uncomfortable to think about his own home.  
  
He followed her anyway, more leisurely in his walk up the stairs.  
  
A dainty foot reached the air in a cute ballerina kick as she flicked the lights on, revealing to Arthur what was, first and foremost, a little girl's bedroom. Never mind that it was the smallest room in the house -- it was a Carrie-esque bedroom.  
  
The pink and white Strawberry Shortcake vanity in his direct line of sight let him know as such. It was piled with dinosaur figurines, some of which were adorned with sticky lip gloss. If he looked hard, he could see thin pink loops of letters under a smudged mirror, reading ** _A smile makes you look your 'berry' best!  
_**  
Carrie whirled around, taking a militant stance as she pointed a finger up at him.  
  
"No boys allowed," she said sternly, although she looked ready to crack a smile. "Even Daddy."  
  
He smirked at that, not intent on invading the space anyway and delving into his own inadequacy.  
  
"Carrie, that's _rude,"_ Joss scoffed, shocking Arthur to stand to more full attention, rather than lean a shoulder against the doorway. She breezed past him. "That's your _father,_ he can come in if he wants."  
  
"N ... no, I'm okay," he said softly, ignoring the fire that torched his vocal cords as he rested his back against the door frame. "I don't wanna make her uncomfortable."  
  
Against his better judgement, curiosity willed him to lean his head in to look at the rest of the room. Right near the window, sitting between a set of matching bedside tables, was a four-poster canopy bed, properly sized for a little girl, and overwhelmed with a thick yellow comforter, patterned with roses to match the drapes. Sitting beneath the blanket, with only his head and ears sticking out, was Frankie.  
  
He thought about his bed at home -- half the time her bed -- with the spring sticking out of the mattress (a misfortune that followed his and Joss' marriage bed, it seemed; he wasn't sure why the sleep gods had a vendetta against him) and the accidental cigarette burns in the comforter. It made his face feel warm.  
  
"Can I show Daddy my toys?" Carrie asked.  
  
"One," Joss said, bringing up a single finger for emphasis. "And then bedtime, and I mean it."  
  
Joss moved to sit on the edge of the bed, watching Carrie hop to her closet, bringing to his attention both an orange bean bag chair and two giant stuffed animals hidden on the other side of the floor near her bed: a beige-colored bear that seemed to surpass its owner in height, if she was to stand him upright, and a big red dog he'd become acquainted with through years of the same picture book.  
  
He and Joss locked eyes momentarily, and she set a slimy feeling in his bones when she smirked at him. It either meant _Kids, right?_ or it meant _Look how much better I am at tending to her needs than you are._  
  
He took in a deep breath and set his arms over his chest, donning an interested facade when Carrie rushed to him, holding yet another dinosaur in her hand. This one, it seemed, had grey frills on the sides of its head.  
  
"This is my favorite kind of dinosaur," she explained, running a finger along a thin frill edge. "I named him Big Bird, 'cause Big Bird is the only kind of bird I like, but this one's dinosaur name is d -- dilop ... dino ..."  
  
She huffed and rolled her eyes heavenward, unknowing of how terribly she amused her parents. A year ago she'd been dead-set on pursuing paleontology, once she'd learned there was a practical career in it. Two months later she announced she'd changed her mind and she wanted to be a librarian instead -- _'I didn't know I have to go to more school to dig dinosaur bones!'  
_  
"Dilophosaurus!" she concluded, eyes wide, triumphant, and adoringly sweet.  
  
"And his name is Big Bird?" he humored. "Why not Dino, like from the Flintstones?"  
  
"He's a _Snorkasaurus,"_ she corrected him, scrunching her brows at the slight to her knowledge.  
  
"Oh, my bad," he apologized, a tinge of a sweet giggle kicking at the unpleasant laughter in his stomach, feeling too much pride in the girl's vast knowledge.  
  
"Are you spending the night?" she asked. "Mom's taking me out to breakfast tomorrow before she goes to work and I think you should come with us. We're going to Egg and Steak House."  
  
"No, Peanut, I'm not spending the night," he replied, wincing internally at the loss of her rosy smile. "I'm sorry, but I got Nana to get home to and I forgot to feed Auggie after work."  
  
"I'd sleep better if you slept here," she bargained.  
  
"What, Nana should just be by herself all the time?" he asked good-naturedly, bending to her level and trying to ignore the discomfort in his joints. It didn't hurt half as bad as the look on Carrie's face.  
  
"Listen, I'm coming back on Saturday, okay? We gotta make your witch costume, and it's gonna look _so pretty_ on you."  
  
A thumb caressed a pallid cheek, beguiling it into a light pinch of comfort. Shifting her eyes, Carrie persisted.  
  
"Well, why don't you come back after you check on Nana?" she considered. "Then you can sleep on the couch like you do at home, 'cept our couch here is more comfortable. You can actually sleep."  
  
"Baby, he has work in the morning," Joss cut in, evidently tired by the disinclination to let him leave. Silently he was thankful for her diversion of Carrie's attention, willing himself to not look too pained as the information was stuffed into his head, kicking him in the frontal lobe.  
  
"We're going to breakfast and then you'll stay with Grandma and Grandpa til I get off work, okay? You'll see Daddy again on Saturday. Say goodnight," she continued.  
  
Arthur hoisted her in the air, unable to help himself, not caring that he got a face full of shoulder pad when she buried her face in the crook of his neck. A dinosaur tail wedged itself in his vertebrae. He did not move her.  
  
"It's okay, Peanut," he soothed. "I promise, _absolutely_ on Saturday, and then I get you for a whole week to myself on Sunday."  
  
A whole week of her to himself -- except when he'd have to share her with Sophie if his mom wasn't feeling right, or send her to her grandparents in the eventuality that Sophie was out of commission as well.  
A whole morning and evening of her to himself.  
  
Carrie pulled her head back, fluttering her black eyelashes, involuntarily egging him to watch her be cute. He was proud that she'd gotten his lashes. His own were still partially dusted white from work earlier that day, but Carrie's ... they curtained her eyes to command one's attention, clear and oceanic in their warring emotional density, almost trying to say, **_let me overwhelm you_**  
  
He swallowed thickly, trying to remain calm as he focused in on how every bit of himself that he disliked was somehow curated into a perfect girl, and not that he was leaving her for the millionth time, and that it aged him a hundred years in a day.  
  
Grabbing him by the ears, their shared ears that he only found fondness in once they'd taken shape on her own person, Carrie planted a rosy kiss on the tip of his nose.  
  
There was an eternal knife edge dancing its way inside Arthur's chest, always ready to leave him crying and bloody if he was pushed over the limit.  
  
He let Carrie rush back to her mother, only giving the briefest glimpse of a cover of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that Joss held in her hand, before he turned away, unwilling to let it happen.  
  
 _"Chapter ten -- The Family Begins to Starve,"_ he heard. It followed him in mockery as he trekked down the stairs and back to the couch. _"During the next two weeks, the weather turned very cold. First came the snow. It began very suddenly one morning just as Charlie Bucket was getting dressed for school ..."_  
  
He blocked it out, not out of preference, but survival. The story was a Fleck bedtime favorite for years, so he didn't need to listen. He didn't need to be reminded that Joss was better at bedtime routine -- always had been. One of the few attributes she could honestly hold to the title of _Mom._  
  
The near-pitch blackness of the room did not deter the book simply labeled ALBUM from making itself known to him, via the light still shining through from the dining room. He willed himself to pick it up, heavy as a boulder, and opened it.  
  
His shoulders relaxed at the sight of a baby's near-toothless smile, her hands awkwardly reaching for air and her blonde hair not yet covering the mound of her ridiculous head. She was in her christening dress, getting lost in the puffiness (although it confused Arthur even to now why she needed a christening -- he and Joss had never been particularly religious).   
  
It was the first time Joss had a big enough paycheck for an expensive birthday gift for Carrie. The Christmas portraits, she'd scrimped and saved for two months.  
  
He turned the page and saw what he expected to see. Holly flowers and a wedding dress, of which he wasn't sure of the whereabouts now. A baby strapped in a giraffe high chair, smeared in chocolate cake and coconut shavings. He flipped through. Birthdays that weren't as messy.  
  
School pictures, which were shared between two parents. Family gatherings that Arthur had been shoved out of in four years. A plethora of Christmas presents that circled an evidently happy, sleepy girl in her nighties. More professional portraits. Joss' school plays. A young girl of 13 or 14 hanging from the bars of a jungle gym. Juxtaposed with her five-year-old daughter on a dome climber, Arthur just out of frame and holding his hands out, testing his anxiety for her amusement. A happy pregnancy that preceded an unenviable weight gain. Some of them had Arthur with her, some of them not.  
  
Joss in a purple and gold cap and gown combination -- Gotham Heights High School. Arthur thanked God and everyone that nobody bothered to take a picture of him in his emerald and white cap and gown.  
  
Arthur's eyes dropped to the hand resting on Joss' scarlet-covered shoulder. Her own hands enveloped the baby. The baby's hands toyed with the lace of her red velvet dress. A stupid elastic bow of the same color and material covered the circumference of her disinterested head.  
  
Arthur was called _"Dad"_ by the photographer that day as much as by the nurses and doctors the night his daughter was born. There was no greater title anywhere.  
  
"Well _okay,_ Snoopy."  
  
He shut the book, feeling indignation cutting at the pad of his forefinger.  
  
"Arthur, I'm _kidding,"_ Joss said, hitching her words as she bounded the steps to join him on the couch. "Can't you ever relax?"  
  
Did she want the honest truth, that he wanted to tear his hair out and run away into the woods screaming? That her house was so much nicer than his that he hated everything about it and about her? That this was the most motherly he'd seen her in ages and it was under the worst possible circumstances that made him ashamed of himself?  
  
She sat down, ignoring his lack of response. Two shadows procured distended, oblong shapes in the light of the dining room pouring on their backs.  
  
"I think Carrie is getting confused," Joss concluded, eyebrows in a permanent arch of discontentment. "I think she thinks we're getting back together for her sake."  
  
"I think it's confusing all three of us," Arthur said, surprised by the not completely unpleasant buzz of confidence in himself. "This is the most time we've spent together in ... _years."_  
  
"Alright, well ..." Joss straightened up, pushing her mouth up into a dissatisfied smirk, still unable to will herself to meet Arthur's eye contact. "... after Saturday, we don't have to deal with each other for a while, outside of pickup time. It's ... good, that we're coordinating time together, for her sake -- one of us just needs to sit her down and tell her we're not planning on dating again."  
  
He shuddered inwardly, beleaguered by the thought of starting again.  
  
He had to wonder if she ever thought this fate for them a possibility as she was pronounced _"Mrs. Fleck"_ by the priest, showered in snow and rice and glitter and sweat as Arthur carried her giggling form over the threshold to their home.  
  
"A little too late for you anyway," he mused, shifting his eyes to her stomach. A waning curiosity had nearly egged him into asking if the little rascal had shown any movements today. For fear of her grabbing his hand and forcing it to feel the evidence of the unthinkable, the unenviable, Arthur stopped himself short of opening his mouth.  
  
Joss thrummed four fingers on the side of her belly, rubbing at the fabric, lacking in the gentility they took in her first pregnancy, where he was all but terrified to graze her stomach and inflict unanticipated damage to their unborn the way he seemed to do to everything he touched.  
  
"I don't think you'd want to be raising someone else's baby," Joss said softly, offering a wry smile. "I don't think my boyfriend would be okay with it either."  
  
"Then why did you invite me over if you don't want me involved?"  
  
He didn't mean to sound irate, nor raise his voice. He wanted his last image of Carrie for the night to be her happily tucked in bed, being read a story by her trying mother -- not her eyes peering at him over the banister as he and Joss engaged in another shouting match. But he had gone from exerting himself spinning signs for work, to exerting himself to build the dresser, to exerting himself mentally with having to leave Carrie.  
  
"I invited you over ... because I wanted the _help,"_ she stressed, matching his volume. "Because I can't lift over fifty pounds and Carrie wanted to see you and _I_ get to choose when to be friendly with you -- you were my _husband!"_  
  
"I'm sorry you're not allowed to forget that."  
  
Her eyes drilled into the side of his skull. He didn't even have to look at her.  
  
"I cannot believe I have to pay you two-hundred dollars," she said suddenly. "Carrie has everything she needs here -- you're a _dickhead."  
_  
His head picked up, slowly but with enough surprise to match her eye level.  
  
"You're paying me?" he asked.  
  
"You are not worth going to jail for," she snipped. "I'll get it to you by Sunday."  
  
He nodded, keeping his face even, pretending he didn't suddenly feel buoyant and ready to scream out at the victory.  
  
"But if I find out, Arthur, that you are using that money to visit that _skank ..."_ Her voice gained a dangerous edge that squirmed all the way up Arthur's spine, hitting the button in his brain labeled **PANIC.** "... I will come after you. I'm giving you this money to provide for our daughter, and nothing more."  
  
"You're giving me that money because you're ordered to by a judge. Don't act like it's out of the goodness of your heart," he challenged, rubbing his hands together in lieu of clenching his fists. "What you would spend your child support on is up to you."  
  
"I don't need your money," she said quickly, flushing red that he saw on one half of her face. "Keith and I are doing just fine on our own. Carrie has everything she needs right here, even if she always wants to stay at your house."  
  
There was as much pride in that statement swimming in his head as there was confusion.  
  
"You get everything so easy with her," Joss snipped. "I'm never _not_ stressed out. She talks to me like that when you're here -- imagine what she says when it's just me and her."  
  
"You think it's _easy_ for me?" he questioned, feeling offense for the first time that night, directed at somebody besides himself. His eyes widened, letting the rings of bloodshot white fully encircle his green irises. "I worry about her constantly. Even when she's not with me -- especially when she's not with me. You don't tell me when you take her to the doctor, so I have to wonder why. You don't tell me that you took her to the dentist until she needs braces, so I have to figure out how to get more hours pay for them."  
  
"You don't _need_ to pay for them, Arthur, I --"  
  
 _"I should be able to."_  
  
They looked at each other now, startled by the sharpness of the declaration. Something close to understanding -- as close as Joss could get -- changed the curvature of her eyes and eyebrows. Both of them were unsure of who was sorry for what and how to reciprocate the apologies that needn't be said out loud.  
  
 _"Every day_ that she's with me, I'm too wound up with worry to fully enjoy her being there. Until she's laying down in bed at night, I can't breathe, and even then I think about how I fucked up during the day," he confessed. "Did I remember to tell her I loved her at breakfast? How was her day at school? Is there something she's not telling me? Did she get enough to eat at dinner? Is she cold? Should I go in and give her my blanket?"  
  
"Arthur, you're ..." She stopped, feeling her tongue grow fat and wet in her mouth. Unsure of if it was proper to pay a compliment to her ex-husband. They didn't divorce for the hell of it. "... She's happy with you. She ... _knows_ that you love her."  
  
"That's ... all I could ask for," he sighed. "I want her to be happy. I want to give her things that you can. I'm the dad. _It's my job."_  
  
"Well ... we didn't agree to do a role reversal and let me be the breadwinner for nothing when she was born."  
  
This provided little consolation. A simmer of giggles from his hunchback form, his hair trembling and curtaining his eyes, made Joss look up at the second-floor door to the far left. An uncountable number of nights as new parents delved into madness when Arthur's shrieking cackles woke up their colicky infant, or vice versa. Joss would like to avoid a re-occurrence under any circumstances.  
  
Against her judgement she put a hand on his shoulder blade. The sinews and bones were disgusting beneath her touch, and she had to question how much food in his house was actually going to him.  
She rubbed his shoulder anyway, waiting for a moment to allow any indication of rejection. When it didn't come, she continued.  
  
It was against any and all reason that she would be inclined to mention that Keith had presented her with a ring when they were in Albany; she kept it in a box in her room, waiting for a right time to say anything. Now was not that time, nor did Saturday seem any more fitting.  
  
"We can go together to get some material for Carrie's costume," she suggested. "Keith might be back by then, but ... I think it should be just a parent-and-child thing."  
  
Keith thus far did not seem unhappy to impede on the role of _father_ in Carrie's life, as far as Arthur could tell. Whether he was supposed to be _thankful_ for that, by the laws of keeping his daughter safe, he was unsure.  
  
\- - - -  
  
He wasn't going to survive Saturday.  
  
Not if Keith was there, and he'd have to leave his daughter in the hands of a man he didn't know, didn't trust, didn't like, didn't --  
  
Arthur left Jocelyn's house with a stronger facade than when he walked in.  
  
He got to the bus stop outside her large property, all the way to his home, to his bedroom, before he cracked.  
  
A rainfall of moth-bitten pillows and a cigarette burned blanket and distraught inadequacy lay in the trash heap outside his window.  
  
 _ **Carrie deserves everything. I'm nothing and Carrie came from nothing and she deserves everything and I'm nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing --**_


	19. Endure

Saturdays made Arthur's skin itch beneath the surface. They weren't fun; they were tedious. He was constantly propelled on the teeter-totter of counting down the hours until he was forced to send Carrie back to her mother's house, or passing the time until he could will himself to sleep and wake up marginally brighter than the week before because _she's coming home today._  
  
No amount of park trips and sitting on oddly-climated benches to watch her do jumps off the playground equipment could sway his opinion that Saturdays _sucked._  
  
It was an abided rule that in kid-dom, Saturday was a holy day of rest and respite; ten o'clock cartoons with cereal and park trips three hours later. To not take the enjoyment seriously was almost sacrilege in the eyes of an eight-year-old.  
  
So Arthur tolerated Saturdays, the same way he tolerated Thundarr the Barbarian's company on his TV screen and the crunching of buttered toast and soggy Frosted Flakes between little teeth waking him up at 11 AM: he didn't like it, but it made Carrie happy, so he _tolerated_ it. _Endured_ it.  
  
It made Carrie happy, and he got to see her for an extra day, so he gritted his teeth and tolerated the swaying of the overstuffed, piss-smelling bus and the sweaty, packed sardines that made up Gotham's disgruntled public; the smell of trash that clung to his washed clothes as he hopped from bus station to bus station.  
  
He more or less ignored the crunch of Jocelyn's gravelly driveway splintering his overstimulated brain, and that a rock cut into the hole in the bottom of his shoe, and how his feet ached from the various bus rides in the relentless June heat and the ten-minute walk from the outskirts of the city to Jocelyn's property, and --  
  
"Oh, you're here early."  
  
 _"Daddy!"_  
  
He wouldn't question the mysticism in how those two high-pitched syllables erased every ache and scratch from his body. He wasn't going to think too hard and destroy its magic.  
  
She was wearing his cowboy pajamas today. He half-smiled.  
  
"You smell like garbage, Daddy," she teased, throwing her arms around his waist and resting her chin on his flat belly.  
  
 _"You_ smell like garbage," he shot back, stroking a thumb sweetly over the apex of her bangs.  
  
"So nice of you to wash up before we went to the store," Joss said as she closed the door behind him, shutting away the urge to grab the child and run. It had crossed his mind.  
  
As he pried the girl away from his hip, he looked wryly at his ex-wife.  
  
"You didn't want me to be a garbage man when we were married," he countered. "It's not my fault your flower bed is smelling like garbage juice."  
  
"No, it's not your fault," she said quietly, the clacking of her heels losing momentum as they shifted from linoleum to carpet. "Just your people's fault."  
  
An indignant and oily feeling, an eel coiling itself around his innards, permeated in his stomach. He stood and watched her for a moment; the tightening of her arms around her person, the tucking of her chin to her chest.  
  
"What do you mean, _'my people'?"_ he asked lowly, losing the acute awareness that he still had one hand wrapped around his daughter's upper arm. With a fleeting look, he let go of her and took a step toward his instigator. "Why do you have to start a confrontation every time I step in the door?"  
  
She balked, eyes shimmering and widening in her own defense. Her head shook.  
  
"Arthur, it's a joke," she exclaimed. "Do you really want to argue in front of her?"  
  
He turned at her gesturing finger. A sullen look was cast to Carrie's skittering feet on the linoleum. Her eyes rolled up to catch her father's before going down again.  
  
"Carrie, go into the kitchen, baby," Joss said, reigning her voice to a lower level. "Eat a doughnut and then get dressed for the store."  
  
She looked up at her mother, her cheeks full and painfully cute.  
  
"Keith said I already had two and you'd get upset if I ate more --"  
  
 _"Carrie,"_ she stressed. "Mom and Daddy need their privacy to talk in the bathroom -- leave us be. Go take your toy car from the backyard to the garage then. It's going to rain tomorrow."  
  
Arthur reflexively rested his hand on her head as she retreated to the front door, letting it linger through the knotted blonde tendrils. The individual strands against the pads of his fingers, the warmth of her little head ... she was real. That made him real.  
  
The sobering realization hit him as hard as the gust of warm wind that swept her out of his sight.  
  
"Wait, Keith is here?"  
  
Not dignifying his concern with a response, Joss grabbed his hand and pulled him along to the steps. Her claws grew tighter, more possessive of his flesh when he struggled to keep up.  
  
"I didn't -- he -- I didn't see a car out--"  
  
His hip bone pressed sharply into a marble counter edge. Shifting uncomfortably, he couldn't find a conceivable way out as Joss closed the door.  
  
"We divorced so we wouldn't argue in front of Carrie," she said abruptly, turning to him. "I do not start the bullshit fighting we do at your house, so do not bring it into mine."  
  
The eel of discomfort that coiled around his spine writhed and sparked him to life, burning the tips of his ears. He drew in a shuddering breath.  
  
"You divorced me because you put our fucking _kid_ as a third priority in our family," he spat. A nagging voice in the back of his mind told him Keith may be privy to the conversation. Let him hear, Arthur didn't care.  
  
 _"Don't fucking tell me why I divorced you_. I divorced you for --" She threw her hands up in surrender, shaking her head fervently. Arthur crossed his arms.  
  
"No," she continued. "No. Today is not about us; it's about Carrie. I don't care if you hate me and you hate being here -- do _not_ pick a fight with me in front of my daughter. Grin and bear it like you always do."  
  
Flaring, he leaned closer to her, his muscles clenching on instinct. He felt ready and willing to spit in her face. _I don't want to be here and I hate you, do you know now how much I care about that girl_  
  
"She's _my_ daughter," he said, low and deliberate. _"I'm_ her custodial parent. If you don't want me to argue with you, don't call them _my people._ You were _one_ of them. _Our daughter_ still is!"  
  
"And every time she comes home, she smells like a fucking sewer," Joss shot back. "Gotham's pissy and poor doesn't need to intrude into my house."  
  
"Then why am I here?"  
  
In the corner of the elongated mirror, Arthur saw what he believed to be himself. It couldn't be anyone else. He was beet red and eyes melded into olive pools white-rimmed frustration. A tuft of a curl licking his forehead subtly trembled as he attempted to contain himself with a breath.  
  
Resting his hands on his hips, he tilted his head at his ex-wife.  
  
"I don't want to argue today," he said plainly. "For her sake. I just wanna get done what we need to get done -- then I can go home and pick her up tomorrow. I'm _tired,_ Joss."  
  
She swallowed thickly, shifting her eyes anywhere that was shiny or clean -- anywhere besides where it may possibly ignite offense. He was slumped over and looked ready to fall over and knock his head into the counter if it guaranteed rest.  
  
"Are you not sleeping again?"  
  
"I'm tired of fighting _every time_ we see each other ... oh god, don't cry. Please not now."  
  
The ricochet of anxiety that catapulted his nerves into over-sensitivity only heightened as he watched her eyes burn to match his own, glassy with tears. He stiffened his upper lip and fought back an eye roll at her dramatics. It was as though she was fighting to take in a breath with her chest expanding.  
  
This was not his baby. Not his wife, not his situation. _Hormones, hormones, hormones._  
  
She careened around him, steadfast and sturdy, until she set her hands on the porcelain toilet, and collapsed like a shattered doll. Cracked and scratchy gagging ricocheted around the bathroom, whose walls were shrinking in around Arthur whenever he cared to look at them to not risk the concern seeping in.  
  
Too late. _Fuck._  
  
"Do I really repulse you that much?" he sneered, attempting to deflect the ignorant feeling. Out of her sight, he silently winced at his own harshness.  
  
A pink finger -- not orange still, but reddish brown -- lifted to cow him into well-rehearsed silence. She swiped an offending dribble of spit that webbed her bottom lip to her chin.  
  
"I'm _pregnant,_ you dick," she sniffled, lifting her eyes to his. A small ripple of a tear mocking him in the bathroom's light made his nose twitch. "I traded preeclampsia with one baby for fucking hyperemesis with another ..."  
  
A fat tongue prodded its way forth, assaulted by the disconcerting appearance of a clear substance pervading its way to the toilet water. Arthur didn't want to watch. He tried to not let his mind turn to when he was holding her hair back in similar circumstances.  
  
Her shoulders heaved. Her head was trembling from exertion. The nagging worry in his head of her pushing herself into another nosebleed as when she was pregnant with Carrie brought its way to the surface with, "Isn't your boyfriend supposed to be here to take care of this? Don't you have Tums?"  
  
"Tums won't do shit." Her head lifted, seemingly taking great effort. As her forehead rested against the toilet ring, he wasn't sure whether the mantra of caution he dished out to Carrie when she was sick would take the same for Joss.  
  
A silence forced them into statue positions -- Arthur stuffing his hands in his pockets, relegated to waiting, and Joss resting her elbows on the toilet, massaging her temples.  
  
It was only ten-thirty. Outside the door he heard the beatnik styling of Scooby-Doo. Carrie wired him to tell time through her Saturday morning lineup.  
  
"Um ..." Joss broke his attention. His eyelids felt tied to anvils as he attempted to put his focus on her. "... if I wash your clothes, could you take a shower?"  
  
"What?"  
  
At the risk of triggering another round of unpleasantness, Joss drew in a breath and looked up at him again, her eyes red and splotchy and pleading.  
  
"I'll wash your clothes ..." she started again, pushing herself up to her feet. His thumb twitched in his jacket, urged forward to grab her arm and steady her -- not that she needed to know that. "... and you can take a hot shower, and then we'll ... go to the store."  
  
"Joss, this is your house, I'd rather --"  
  
"Arthur, please."  
  
The fingers on the back of his neck were warm. It took him a moment to register that they were his own, having enjoyed the heat of his jacket pockets.  
  
He hated her helplessness as much as her condescension.  
  
"Are you gonna stop _throwing up_ if I agree?" he questioned, taking no solace in his own attempt at grounding.  
  
"I might."  
  
"And how does your boyfriend feel about it?"  
  
Her eyes shot heavenward, canvassing the whites in a spider-web of blood.  
  
"It's my house; he can fucking get over it."  
  
"Well aren't you the lovey mother."  
  
He fisted his coat for his cigarettes, shoving them on the counter. He had a feeling he'd be needing them and a little extra throughout the day.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur would not give Joss the satisfaction of knowing he enjoyed the languid dance of the hot steam drawing him to life with every shallow breath.  
  
He couldn't remember the last time the shower at home got hot enough to ease the knots in his muscles. If he could help it, the hot water more often than not was reserved for the two who needed it most.  
  
This selfishness ... he saw its flashing neon sign of appeal.  
  
The Farrah Fawcett shampoo bottle staring at his front left something to be desired. As did the opaque shower door. True, the glass' thickness and structure left him obscure to the outside world, and he and Joss had seen each other in varying states of undress on a near-daily basis for an immodest number of years, but being four-years divorced wasn't supposed to grant him the strange intimacy of being a foot away from his ex-wife when he was as exposed as he could be.  
  
Even if there was a glass door between them.  
  
"Why is there blood in your socks, Arthur?"  
  
There were more shampoo bottles aligning the baskets on the shower head than he could remember seeing anywhere outside of a grocery store. Not a single bar of rundown green Palmolive in sight.  
  
"Because your driveway is shit," he answered.  
  
"Do you need new shoes?"  
  
"I'm not wasting my money on that -- my shoes are just fine."  
  
He heard a sigh of indignation, deafening him against the pop of a yellow shampoo bottle. It gave him sight to his daughter's cherry essence shampoo. In spite of himself, he smiled.  
  
"Enjoy your bloody feet, I guess," he heard her mutter. "Fucking hell. I'm gonna kill you if you get blood on my floor."  
  
"Am I supposed to stay in the shower for forty minutes?" he questioned.  
  
"I mean, you can boil yourself red if you want. It'll only be about twenty-five minutes. I was gonna offer you Keith's lounging pajamas 'til your clothes got out of the dryer."  
  
He opened the door the slightest bit, red in the face at the hypothetical. Joss' eyes trained in on his chest, his face. No lower. There was no modesty left to spare when she was holding his jeans and shirt.  
  
"I'm _not_ putting on his fucking clothes, Joss," he spat. "I'm on edge just being in the house with him."  
  
The door slid closer to cover himself when her eyes began to sink. A flash of a smirk pulled one pink lip corner up.  
  
"Why not?" she asked. "You're using his conditioner."  
  
He looked down at the sudsy clump in his palm. Its color had melded from a sweet lemon yellow to something more akin to piss.  
  
He drew his hand under the shower head, washing away any conceivable connection.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur pressed his face in the soft, soft red towel, offering him clear air in the dense, hot fog of the bathroom.  
  
Nobody in the apartment could probably afford cotton towels. All the towels that lined the linen closet of the Fleck household were wool; withered with age and gnawed by the big dog that was the downstairs washing machine.  
  
It smelled like lemons. Lemons and rejuvenation and satisfaction. Arthur wrapped the towel around his waist and slid the glass door open, finding his clothes in a neat pile on the counter's edge. Beneath his feet was another towel; soft, blue. No holes that shocked him with cold linoleum through his toes.  
  
He reached for his jeans and skivvies first. After slipping into them, the damp on his legs giving some resistance to the fabric, he wrung the ends of his hair out in the towel.  
  
 _"Jossy, honey ..."_ Something heavy and cold dropped into the low of Arthur's stomach. _"Are you boiling water in the bathroom? There's steam pouring out from under the door!"_  
  
The knob clicked. Arthur fumbled for the towel to wrap around him, thankful for whatever gods he did and didn't believe in that he'd managed to pull his trousers on.  
  
There was a yelp.  
  
"Fucking Christ!" Keith exclaimed, his shoulders leaping back in his blue polo. Another cotton towel, this one violet, unfurled and reduced to a crumple around his feet, decimating the completed rainbow collection he held in his arms.  
  
Arthur stood, letting the towel drop, unsure of his fight or flight instinct that drove an electric current of life through his spine and kept his eyes wide as saucers. One finger coiled around the belt loop of his trousers, giving him assurance of their protection.  
  
His mouth opened, struggling for a sound, displaying the sunkenness of his features. Eyes shifting wildly, he knew he looked like a fish out of water.  
  
"Jocelyn didn't tell me you were here," Keith said instead. "Jossy!"  
  
The door slammed shut, the chilling wind of it knocking Arthur into a shriveled mess; a little boy who hunched and covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut when he was ambushed with loud noises.  
  
A bassy giggle swelled in his throat, shooting up in pitch and pushing past his lips in staccato jitters. The irregularity of his heartbeat drumming painfully against his rib-cage jutted his chest out and sunk his stomach further in on his morbid frame.  
  
 _Jossy._  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur took languid but deliberate steps around the house, as if to not alert an attacker of his presence. He felt like a deer caught in the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler, his heart jackhammering and then relaxing so swiftly, he thought he could've died.  
  
Fortune gave permission for the shower to release the tension in his muscles at the cost of his back. The violent, anxious trembling put a hard knot through his spine. No amount of twisting or turning could save him.  
  
Carrie bobbed and weaved her way around the couch, catching his attention briefly as he pursued the kitchen. A smile and a polite wave was sent his way as she leapt up on the cushions in a sugary frenzy. He smiled softly.  
Jocelyn stood behind a kitchen counter, dissecting a blueberry cake doughnut. Not a damn thought fleeting in through one ear or out the other.  
  
"You could've told your boyfriend I was here."  
  
White knuckles rested on the tiled counter, allowing his body a needed rest. Her slowing chewed as she sparked to recognition.  
  
"My bad," she said simply. A dark brow shot up in question.  
  
 _"My bad?"_ he repeated slowly, testing its dour, filmy coating on his teeth. "He could've had grounds to _kill_ me."  
  
"Oh, relax, Arthur. You had clothes on."  
  
She waved away the concern on his face with one hand, taking in the cakey delicacy with the other.  
  
 _One two three, in, one two three, out_  
  
"If I walked into the bathroom of my house ..." he began lowly. "... and I saw a half-naked man, and my pregnant girlfriend and her daughter were downstairs, I wouldn't take the time to care what clothes he had on."  
  
 _I would've shot him, shot him, **shot him**_  
  
"Well, good thing it's not Keith's house then," she said simply. "And good thing Keith knows who you are."  
  
"Yeah, good thing," he replied sardonically. Good thing he looked at Keith with such disdain when they were at the concert so they familiarized each other's territorial glances. **_Keep away from my girl and I'll keep away from yours.  
_**  
"Carrie, this had better be your last doughnut."  
  
Speaking of his girl, the blonde sprite padded into the space between them, unknowing of her distraction from the heated issue at hand. Happy and naive, she reached up on her tiptoes for the Krispy Kreme box. The nose-to-counter height kept the decision a surprise to her.  
  
Her hair was brushed for the day ahead now, and she sported bell bottoms and a red tank top. A faded but decipherable golden W on the chest signified her long-held affinity for Wonder Woman.  
  
"What are you doing in regular clothes, Peanut? It's not even noon yet." It was 11:18 AM. God help him, it wasn't even noon. "It's illegal to wear regular clothes before noon."  
  
Her bottom lip was caught between childish teeth in contemplation, a shifty eye looking up at him. It was hard not to smile at the unchallenged charm, even if it was driven by a sugary high.  
He opened the box to aid her. Three lithe little digits traveled over a corner in the box, over a cinnamon sugar doughnut, before retracting.  
  
"That one's yours," she decided.  
  
"I'm alright, Peanut," he declined, his stomach empty from the lack of food that morning and the night previously, but rattled with anxiety from the earlier unpleasantness.  
  
"Keith went out to get donuts for Mom this morning, and I told him to get a cinnamon sugar one, 'cause I said it was my favorite, but secretly I knew it was your favorite," she explained. "Mom's been eating a _lot_ of donuts lately."  
  
"Okay, Carrie," Joss interrupted. Her face tinged a sweet pink that made Arthur giggle as she held back her own laugh of self-derision. "One more doughnut and then you go brush your teeth. We're going to the store at twelve o'clock."  
  
"D'you wanna eat this one if I eat one?" she asked, turning her head back up to her slightly jaded father. "I don't like it when I eat and you don't."  
  
There was no conceivable reason she needed more sugar in her system before the clock struck twelve. There was also no question in his mind as to whether his long time in the shower marked this as her third or fourth doughnut in as many hours. He was well aware she'd already had two by her own word.  
  
He took the pastry anyway.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Carrie had set them into a familiar pattern of the same position as Thursday evening -- him sitting on the far right end of the couch, her head resting on his lap. A plate sat on the coffee table, a single child-sized bite taken out of a dry, oily, sugary doughnut that was sure to disagree with him later.  
  
In place of her Atari joy stick, which had enabled her sudden jerkiness in the haste to move through her game, she had her faithful Frankie sitting on her chest, tempted in a high, girlish voice to take a bite of her cruller. Her gentle play ensured that more sugary flakes ended up on the crest of her shirt than in her mouth.  
  
He stroked her hair back softly, mussing her bangs to expose her forehead. The high ponytail she'd formed laid across his left thigh as her attention switched every few minutes between her rabbit's company and Tom and Jerry's antics on the TV screen.  
  
It was the strangest heaven he could remember in recent memory.  
  
"Hey, kiddo, can I sit down?"  
  
His eyes snapped into focus at the voice. Keith was rounding the couch at a leisurely pace, dipping down into the couch as Carrie's feet hiked into her person.  
  
Arthur froze, his eyes training in on the leg of the coffee table, at a loss of where he should be looking.  
  
 _Not my house, not my furniture, I don't fucking belong here_  
  
Carrie's fidgeting brought him out of the reverie. He looked down.  
  
"Gimme your foot," Keith said.  
  
"No."  
  
"Gimme your foot, your mom said your feet were hurting when she put you down last night."  
  
She relented with aggression, shoving her dainty heel in the meat of Keith's denim-clad thigh. A thumb brushed the sharp bone of her ankle, perching her foot on his lap. Arthur's heart rippled. He stopped stroking her hair, attempting to look only out of his peripheral vision.  
  
"Ow!" Carrie hissed. Keith's thumb shoved forcefully into the dip in her foot, giving way to a cramped muscle.  
  
"Sorry, sorry," he said quickly, moving up to grab her toes.  
  
One hand instinctively reached behind her knee and tugged sharply, pulling the offended limb out of Keith's grasp. Carrie curled in on her father, her rabbit and half-eaten cruller making a mess of the couch. Arthur could feel her physically unwind out of Keith's misbegotten hold on her.  
  
Over her head, the two men stared at each other. Underneath Arthur's front of brief irritation _(don't touch what isn't yours, don't fucking touch her if she tells you no),_ some greedy, giggling part of him was satisfied to watch a spark of indignation flare in Keith's dull steel grey eyes. The younger man's jaw clenched as he turned away.  
  
Arthur's arm draped around Carrie's shoulder as she hiked up to rest against him. It stayed there regardless of their awkward positioning.  
  
"So what are we watching, is that Tom and Jerry?" Keith questioned.  
"Mm-hmm," Carrie answered.  
  
"And what's he doing now?"  
  
"The girl's dressing Tom up like a baby, so Jerry's making fun of him."  
  
"Oh, that's not nice."  
  
Arthur bit the side of his tongue, ignoring the molted lava heat that pulsed in his ears, flushing them red and visible to Keith's sight.  
  
 ** _It's not even noon yet._**  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _To Arthur's limited knowledge on the subject, any and all television and radio advertisements advised him that a pregnant woman's saving grace was sweet pickles. Two months of being privy to his dear wife's condition had confirmed this to be true.  
_  
 _Joss had commandeered the shopping cart, leaving him and his red-wire shopping basket on a hunt for the blue-billed Vlasic stork that imbued the power to keep her happy.  
_  
 _There was something more fun to it than he'd expected; there was a thrill he hadn't really assessed added to the mundane task of grocery shopping. His paychecks weren't just feeding two anymore, but **three.** That scolding voice in the back of his brain that constantly egged him to work harder, **work harder, do more, do it for her** was no longer nagging but **encouraging.**  
_  
 _Do it for **her,** do it for **them.**  
_  
 _His heart fluttered, and he grinned stupidly and sweetly as he pushed two ... three jars of sweet pickles in the basket.  
_  
 _"Arthur! Art, sweetie!"  
_  
 _He turned at the call and instinctively broke into a light jog to meet his wife halfway up the aisle. It would not do her good to be running when she was four months along. But it seemed after giving up her cigarettes cold turkey, there wasn't much he could sway Joss from doing or not doing. He could only argue with her so many times about letting him step on the rickety foot stool to grab something off the fridge instead.  
_  
 _Still, the sunshiney glow of her high cheeks kept the stupid, sappy grin on his face, even as he surveyed the cart that seemed to be pasta, and nothing but. Such had been their grocery list for the past few months._  
 _A mesh of fabric was held up to his line of sight.  
_  
 _"I was going to get some more food, but when I passed the clearance bin in the back corner, I found this."  
_  
 _Two sets of fingers pinched the corners of the fabric, unfurling it to present a set of overalls; size zero, impossibly cute. He smirked.  
_  
 _"Honey, don't you think we have enough clothes for the baby?" he tried gently. Among many other surprises, the level of delicacy he'd had to manage to prevent a crying fit had taken some getting used to. "I mean, your dad and I still gotta put the dresser together and all the onesies are just piling up in the corner. Christmas was just two weeks ago."  
_  
 _"Arthur, one extra outfit won't break the dresser. It's only fifty cents," she laughed, tossing the clothing in the cart, the little nook of space where mothers typically kept their squirming, fussy babies.  
_  
 _He was still trying to wrap his mind around the mental image of a year from now -- **their** squirming, fussy baby, as sweet as a peach and looking exactly like its mama.  
_  
 _"Okay," he relented. "This one outfit, but we still gotta pay for all this ..." He gestured to the obscene display of their shopping cart. "What are you even gonna do with ten boxes of pasta and three chicken thighs, Joss? You gonna cook for the Vietnam troops?"  
_  
 _She laughed. Her sense of humor had markedly changed to match his own wry observations since she'd gotten pregnant. The doctor had called it 'hormonal imbalance' or 'mood swings.'  
_  
 _"I was thinking of chicken alfredo for dinner tonight," she answered, beginning to push the cart forward, falling into a leisurely pace alongside her husband. Out of pure impulse, Arthur reached into the cart to alleviate her burden.  
_  
 _"How much were you planning on making?" he questioned.  
_  
 _"Oh, don't be silly, sweetie," she smiled, rolling her eyes in his direction. "I'm just making enough for two ... well, three tonight." They spared a few giggles; relentlessly happy, they were, and unashamed of the display of it. "The rest is for saving up in the pantry -- just in case the fridge goes out again and we gotta stick to dry foods for a few weeks."  
_  
 _He tried not to think of it -- the cost of a new, more reliable fridge, the sleepless and eatless nights where the leftovers had gone bad but they'd already withered their combined paychecks on rent and Arthur's meds. They'd had a good fight about his willingness to go without so she could have her shower medicine to treat the psoriasis on her legs (and, he pointed out, her medicine was much cheaper), but she'd fought against his so-called "martyr complex" and taken the money from his hands and left in a huff, returning twenty minutes later with a bag of three rattling bottles.  
_  
 _"Well, I got you this, just in case that happens," he said, his mind forcing him back to the reality. They were almost at the conveyor belt, and she was looking at him in that sickeningly sweet way. "It's not much for nutrition and I know the doctor said not much sugar, but I know you like it."  
_  
 _"Artie ..." she grinned, her eyes trailing along the can of cherry frosting as it was pulled along to the register. "You don't need to get me that."  
_  
 _"But I **want** to," he countered. "I wanna focus on you and **just** you while I still can."  
_  
 _Pink frosting. It tasted like sugary glue, in his opinion. No hint of cherry at all, and it had taken all but scrubbing his tongue down with soap to get the aftertaste out of his mouth. But he'd caught her (more than once, against her knowledge) spoon-feeding herself the disgusting radioactive food from the can in the dead of night.  
_  
 _Pink **specifically.** **Cherry** specifically. She believed it was a good omen that they were having a girl.  
_  
 _He sighed, delirious with love._  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Arthur?"  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"This list is bullshit."  
  
A brow shifted up and Arthur allowed himself to lean his elbow on the cart's handle, skimming over the green paper that she held up to his line of sight.  
  
"I mean, this is stupid," Joss balked. "A pink shirt, a skirt, glitter, what --? A plastic fucking tiara and wand? Where's the ingenuity?"  
  
"Joss, this is an elementary school play," Arthur attempted. Out of the side of his watchful eye, a certain eight year old was hanging off the edge of the cart. "I don't think kids know what ingenuity means. Hey, _get off the cart,_ missy."  
  
She bit her bottom lip in indignation at the command, but got off anyway. Her fingers were weaving around the metal railings of the cart before he turned back to Joss.  
  
"I was in theatre," she reminded him. "I was the costume coordinator in my freshman year of high school. This ... _this_ offends me."  
  
A puff of involuntary laughter escaped him. It was less hormones talking and more her theatric fervor. As stressful as it could be, it ran deep in her blood. Between the two of them, Carrie was bound to be better than they could hope to be.  
  
"We can't just alter what the school tells us we can do," he retorted. "This is about Carrie -- not you."  
  
"What, they'll punish her for making her a pretty costume?"  
  
He hated her tone when she spoke to him like that, as though he'd asked something inane and almost unworthy of a response.  
  
 _("If you have to ask why I'm upset, Arthur, then maybe you're part of the fucking problem.")  
_  
They were in a craft store. This was not the time to rile an argument out of her.  
  
"I know what I'm gonna do," Joss said, lifting a finger up, sparking a master plan in her brain. "I know. Carrie, c'mon."  
  
"Mom, it's _fine."_  
  
"No, it is _not_ fine, now come with me."  
  
She latched onto Carrie's wrist and pulled her away, urging Arthur to _"Stay with the cart, we got good stuff, I'll be back."_  
  
He was getting tired of watching people put their hands on his kid. Regardless who her mother was or otherwise.  
  
Arthur closed his eyes, shutting out the sounds of shopping carts and Joss' muttering from the next aisle.  
  
He had to get home early enough to give his mom a bath tonight. Get her something to eat before bed, make sure she got her meds. He had work on Monday. A birthday party and then a sick kids' ward. If his mom wasn't feeling well, he'd just have to bring Carrie along, since he knew Sophie worked on Mondays.  
  
Hoyt greatly discouraged him bringing her in anymore than he had to, especially to a hospital. Germs and decay. But at least it taught her thankfulness for her good health. He was always trying to find her fortune, even if he couldn't find it for himself in his decrepit apartment.  
  
Maybe Heather Flynn's parents could ... no, no, her mom was pregnant, too. _Fuck.  
_  
"I'm back -- I got everything in the car ... where's Jossy and Carrie?"  
  
 _ **Fuck.**_  
  
Arthur glared and shrugged.  
  
"She's having an episode, isn't she?" Keith questioned. Arthur nodded tightly, his tongue feeling dead and useless and his vocals as hard as rusty iron. He was not wasting his voice on this man. _"Shit,_ I got ice cream in the car. She'll kill me if it melts."  
  
Arthur stared, feeling uncomfortable and then feeling nothing. Numbness and something trying to rip away at his chest. His eyes focused on a row of glitter canisters a few feet away on an opposite shelf.  
  
"Was her first pregnancy this stressful?" Keith asked. "The hormones and the sickness and the ... Jossy sent me out at six this morning for breakfast."  
  
 _Hormones and sickness and cravings and a suicide attempt that ballooned her blood pressure and her body and I miss it, I abandoned her, abandoned them, **stop fucking complaining because you won't miss it like I did**_  
  
"No, she was just fine," he said quietly.  
  
He nodded in contemplation within Arthur's line of sight. A pressure point of irritation permeated in the middle of Arthur's brain, ready to split it in half. His feet stayed rooted to the spot, per Joss' request, unwilling to be the one to make the first move. If Carrie's incessant fascination with dinosaurs taught him anything, it was to stay dormant and unmoving against a predator.  
  
Both men strayed from each other's direct glances, only sparing a look when he knew the other one wasn't paying attention. Keith stuffed his hands in his pockets.  
  
"It's nice that she's including you in on this to help Carrie," Keith started. "I know they like having you around."  
  
 _Nice_ wasn't the word Arthur would've gone with. _Including him in_ was downright asinine. Per the court, _he_ had the power to include or exclude _her_ from matters involving their daughter.  
  
"Well, I _am_ her father," he said, softer still, and offered a wry smile. "I would hope to get to do this."  
  
"I always wanted to do something like this for a girl of my own." Gosh, the man didn't know when to quit. Arthur's head pounded harder and spread to his ear drums. "I know this is a you and Jossy thing, but I have two boys ... don't really know the experience. At least not yet."  
  
 _You plan on rubbing your own daughter's feet when she tells you not to?_  
  
"I'm really just trying to respect boundaries here, Arthur."  
  
He stared, furrowing a brow. The use of his name out of the man's mouth was more casual than he'd anticipated. _Keith_ sounded like an insect that flew in without warning and buzzed from ear to ear -- no matter how hard one swatted to get it away. Not a name but an _insult._  
  
Keith looked at him with what he deciphered to be earnestness. Arthur struggled not to show any trust in that statement.  
  
"My main objective is to get Carrie comfortable before the new baby gets here," Keith continued. "Jocelyn and I _don't_ want her to feel excluded at all. I've been a stepfather before my second son was born and ... it was a big struggle to get both my girlfriend's kid and my first boy adjusted to us. Even if you and I ... don't agree on most things, it's important for _her_ sake ... her and Jossy's sake, really, that we keep an honest communication."  
  
Arthur nodded slowly, molasses in his bones.  
  
A strip of fluorescent light stayed strong and proud in his retinas when he closed his eyes.  
  
"Carrie doesn't like anyone touching her feet," he acknowledged. "Joss used to pull her out of bed by her ankles when she was angry with her. Nobody's allowed to touch her feet -- only my mom."  
  
"Okay, glad to know that." Keith's voice was bouncy. Preppy. It grated on his nerves more than the words themselves alleviated them. "I wish I would've known that earlier."  
  
Arthur continued to stare, unsure of the receding feeling of irritation that had weaved itself finely in his ribs. He drew in a deep breath, his eyes once again traveling between the rows and rows of glitter canisters. Joss had thrown two silver ones in the cart that he guarded so sternly.  
  
This guy felt ... tolerable. _Annoying,_ but bearable.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Carrie, stand _still."_  
  
"My arm is tired, Mom. _Ow!"_  
  
Her shoulder jerked forward, the third time in as many minutes, and a strip of glittery tulle hung lamely from her pink sleeve. Her sharp intake of breath reverberated around the bathroom's stoic grey tiles. A series of pins held it in place. The danger of getting pricked was cold as ice against her skin. A flimsy paper crown sat atop her head until the more proper one that Joss made finished drying.  
  
Arthur held her arms up, his own growing tired from the effort, and stifled a laugh as her forearms hung limply at her sides, swaying. Her posture indicated as much a scarecrow as a witch.  
  
Joss' brow lifted and she tucked another pin into the material, holding it in place. In a passionate mood, her effort went undeterred, come hell or high water. _**We're getting it done tonight, you're going to be the prettiest witch, Carrie, I am going to get this done for you, Arthur, hold her arms.**_  
  
As admirable as she was infuriating, even if the latter extended to all occupants of the house. On a little radio behind them, Judy Garland was singing about a rainbow.  
  
"Can I walk around in all that fabric?" Carrie questioned. "I'll have to be able to walk, Mom."  
  
"Oh, don't worry, baby -- I might have a hoop skirt in the closet that I can have you try on. It'll give you that billowy look."  
  
"Why do you have a hoop skirt?" Arthur balked, the rough edge of his voice lined with high amusement. She passed over the packet of pins to his hand, and took over the duty of tending to Carrie's arm. "There's no reason you need one."  
  
"Kept it after my last college play. You remember, Cinderella? I was the fairy godmother?"  
  
He nodded vaguely, not understanding but conceding that he didn't particularly need to. He had distant recollections of her sewing something for her college play at the time, but the flurry of more pressing memories stored it away in an unimportant pile of dust.  
  
"I was actually pregnant with you when I did that show," Joss mentioned, prodding Carrie's back lightly. "Had to make a hoop skirt to hide myself because everyone who saw my stomach wanted to feel you kicking."  
  
Arthur glowered, his mouth curving into a thin grimace. He remembered that, even when he didn't want to. That culture that submitted his wife's power of who got to touch her pudgy little belly over to any person who felt a need to do so without bothering to _ask._ Many a shameless moment, he'd had to physically put himself between her and the innocent assailant if the baby was being particularly springy and hardwired a limb into Joss' lower stomach.  
  
"It won't fit _my_ hips anymore," Joss went on. "So _you_ can try it."  
  
Carrie looked as enthused by the idea as when Arthur, attempting gentility, accidentally prodded her with a pin. She winced. He ground his front teeth into the tip of the pins in his mouth. Only two left.  
  
"I won't make you put on the skirt to put the pins in, baby," Joss consoled. Carrie's hissing of irritated pain overrode the jaunty musical score that hummed sweetly behind them.  
  
It was five o'clock.  
  
He wouldn't be home until well past whatever time he naively assumed would accommodate Joss.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Trying to accomplish a task with Carrie often felt like Arthur had a cat peeking over his shoulder. Her body, spry as it was, contorted and consumed whatever work surface he had available to him, and she would twist her head in his direction as though she was the same pet cat at home that demanded nuzzling and constant affection.  
  
The small ponytail on the apex of her head bobbed as she tilted to watch her father's hands at tender work. She leaned in to observe. Sharp, bony shoulders jutted out of her red tank top. Splotches of red marked evidence of her encounter with the sewing pins.  
  
Joss had sent them to the dining room to make a star-patterned prop wand while she ran off to finish heaven knows what. He'd fortunately only had to say less than five words to Keith _("Uh, hot glue gun")_ to make him assist and then scram, moving his smoke session elsewhere.  
  
"I'm sorry Mom's so embarrassing," Carrie said quietly. He smirked, pushing a fat rhinestone in the center of a silvery, glittery strip of a star.  
  
"She's your _mom,_ Peanut. They're supposed to be embarrassing."  
  
"But she's not embarrassing unless people are over here!"  
  
He spared her a humored glance. The melding of green and blue made two perfects worlds in their mind's eyes.  
  
"I've known your mama _long_ before you, Peanut," he tried again, dabbling another dollop of hot glue on a star pattern. "I'm used to her acting this way. You should've seen her when we had to plan our wedding."  
  
"Why did you get married early?"  
  
 ~~ _ **("I wanna get married before the end of the year or I'm gone, Art, I promise you that.")  
**_~~  
"Well I was in love with her. That's why most people get married."  
  
"Well why did you two get divorced?"  
  
Did she always have to prod him in the brain? She was old enough to have been able to remember the fighting, the screaming, the glasses and bowls hurled at the walls in pursuit of him from Joss' shaking hands.  
  
He pressed another rhinestone in, feeling his guts twist.  
  
"Who knows?" he asked lowly.  
  
"Carrie?" Joss called, distant but strident still. "C'mere, sweetheart!"  
  
She hopped off her chair and disappeared into the dark of the living room, cold and silent as a crypt, leaving Arthur to finish the two stars in disconcerted peace.  
  
From the darkness that shrouded Carrie and passed her out of his view, Keith emerged in her absence as Arthur stood up, in need of a clock.  
  
His hip rested against a corner cabinet, the low dip of his back warmed by the distant but tangible heat of the coffee pot.  
  
 **7:49 PM.** He would never hear the end of it.  
  
"They still not done in there?"  
  
Whatever shrivel of peace he'd wanted to attain as he closed his eyes was eradicated when Keith's boots clunked and clomped on the floor, the crackling of an ashy, decadent cigarette waning his attention where he didn't want it to be.  
  
"What do you expect?" he found himself asking quietly, surprising himself. "It's Joss."  
  
"Did she ever send you out for donuts at six in the morning?"  
  
"... No." The fragile rattling of nerves bundled close to his chest, reading to pin-prick his heart, shuddered anxiously as he reached into his jacket for his packet of smokes. If he really had to be around the man and fake small talk, it was necessitated. "... Sweet pickles. Pasta. Mint chip ice cream."  
  
"Oh god, I know Carrie goes nuts over mint ice cream. I've started buying two pints so they each have one."  
  
He nodded hollowly, focusing his attention on a crack of linoleum in the floor. A split of imperfection in her perfect little bubble of vintage domesticity.  
  
"I have two boys," Keith said, as though stating it as a matter of fact for Arthur's attention for the first time. "Neither of my girlfriends ate half as much as Jossy does."  
  
He wasn't sure what to say to this, or if a response was expected. A plug of smoke lodged in his throat and forced his prepared words back down into their cage. Joss _ate_ a lot because she was _doing_ a lot. Half of Arthur's late night store ventures when Joss was with child the first time were of his own volition, wanting to make and keep her happy. She'd tried to give him tokens of appreciation for his hard work; she knew the physical, painful yearning of wanting to be wanted, to touch and be touched. He rarely let her if she was feeling out of her element.  
  
"Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to go out and get what she needs," Keith persisted, bringing a splayed hand up for emphasis of retracting his statement. "And I'd do anything for her and the kids, it's just ... a lot."  
  
Arthur sighed. The smoke that filtered between his teeth rejoined and slinked its way into his vision, shrouding his thoughts in sultry grey lines that twisted and danced for his leisure.  
  
"Why don't your sons live with you?"  
  
Fuck propriety. He had to know. His _daughter_ was living with this guy.  
  
Keith's shoulders retracted in on himself, his head stooping slightly. A tuft of sandy brown hair slanted against his head, covering his forehead.  
  
"I wanted to move out to Gotham for my career. I had my first son when I was twenty so it was difficult to provide financially, but my girlfriend wanted him to go to school in Weehawken. He's at boarding school right now."  
  
"Is ... was that the one who was sick?"  
  
"Oh no, that was Kevin, my younger one. He's five," he smiled, allowing himself a smile of recognition. "Hundred-and-five degree fever, but he's alright now. Broke right before I got to the hospital. No, no, the one at boarding school is Layne. He's ten. I get to see them one weekend a month and for the big holidays."  
  
 _A kid every five years._ Joss was just a cycle.  
  
"How old are you?"  
  
"Is this a grilling?" he joked. "I'll by thirty-one in November."  
  
"Well ..." Arthur's eyes shifted, looking frantically for a place to land to stop his incredulity from becoming prominent. He focused on his cigarette. "... Would -- wouldn't you wanna know about the guy who's living with your kids to make sure he's safe around them?"  
  
Keith's jaw shifted to the right, sucking his cheeks in slightly for a red-faced pout. His blinking was rapid-fire before he visibly relaxed enough to smile at Arthur.  
  
"Carrie is safe with us," he assured, moving with a near-strut to open and peruse the fridge. "I would never do anything to hurt her."  
  
"I never said you would."  
  
Whether or not he believed that, he had to. For his own fragmented sanity, he had to.  
  
The fridge closed, its iridescent light stripping Keith's eyes of their bright blue glow, and he tossed an orange up in the air, catching it right back in his palm in a vice grip. He meandered past Arthur to grab a napkin.  
  
"Arthur, let me give you some advice. Carrie loves you a lot, obviously. _You're_ her father. I can only do so much."  
  
Arthur nodded slowly, agreeing with the sentiment. Keith's nail dug into the orange peel mercilessly, stripping it bare of its cover, torn to pieces and discarded into the napkin, as a bead of juice ran down his thumb.  
  
"Carrie is looking at your example," he continued. "She will only trust as many people as she sees you trust. I want her to be able to trust me, so maybe I indulge a little too much to not be the strict bad guy. She will ... succeed later in life if she's able to trust that people will help her, otherwise she'll grow up sheltered and afraid to speak out, 'cause she won't trust people not to disrespect her."  
  
How did he feel about that?  
  
 _Don't fucking talk about my parenting, you negligent dickhead, you --  
_  
"Boys!" Joss called in a sing-song tone, breezing into the kitchen with a sunny gleam to her eye. Quickly, Arthur snubbed his cigarette out in the discarded peel.  
  
Joss stood in front of them, her back pressing against a large cabinet, gaze shifting to the dining room.  
  
"Carrie, c'mere, sweetheart."  
  
She did.  
  
She was _pink_.   
  
Great puffs of sparkly tulle shoulders coiled down to rhinestone-covered sleeves. There were rhinestones on her crown, her chest, her waist, which -- with the addition of the supposed hoop skirt, billowed like a great ball of shimmering cotton candy. Her hair was down, hugged against her head while the foam crown commanded faux-respect and admiration.  
  
Arthur was more than willing to give. He pressed a hand to his face, unaccustomed to the authenticity of his smile. The gentle pounding of his heart, which burned his face in his zeal, turned painful in its excitement when she smiled up at him.  
  
There were words being said. Exclamations of pride and awe. He didn't hear any of them. His head felt submerged in a vat of gelatin, blocking out any sensation besides looking, look, _look, look at her, look at her, look --_  
  
As pink and awe-consuming as the night she was born. Painfully beautiful and yellow-haired and sprightly, knocking the wind from his lungs.  
  
 ** _Oh, my god! She's beautiful, Art -- you're beautiful!_**  
  
He didn't care that it was eight o'clock. He didn't care what time it was. They could've been standing in the kitchen for an hour for all he knew, just staring and staring.  
  
"And what do we say?"  
  
"Thank you for making the wand, Daddy."  
  
He nodded, not trusting himself with speaking. A high giggle threatened him with an appearance, too overwhelmed by her cuteness and the situation that surrounded him.  
  
 _Not my house. Not my family. Not my life but **my** kid, **my kid,** she's the best of it all and she's **my kid**_  
  
Too overwhelmed with love. Too overwhelmed to speak. Too overwhelmed to notice Joss smiling as much at him as at Keith.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur didn't know the last time -- if there had ever been a first or last time -- that he left Carrie at her mom's and felt relieved.  
  
She was curled up on the couch, her dress safely tucked away in her room and now clad in her pajamas, enthralled in the night's latest episode of Breaking Away. He could see her over Joss' shoulder as they stood just outside, the smell of the city at once repugnant and inoffensive, intermixed with the kitchen's beef stroganoff reminding them of old hunger and hilariously repetitive pasta recipes from when the subtle dilation of her stomach was his doing.  
  
"This is for you."  
  
A wad of green was pulled from Joss' jean pocket. In the hard night that offered no mercifully beautiful luminescence, he could only see that it was as big as a lime.  
  
"I hope all tens is okay. I will only give this to you ..." Joss started. "... if you tell me you'll buy some new shoes. I don't need your blood in my driveway."  
  
"... Thank you."  
  
She nodded silently, closing his fingers in around the collection of money, as hot and heavy as a stone. In the near-darkness only aided by the waxing moon above them, a patch of light bounced off her snub nose. The ethereal pregnancy glow had started.  
  
"Thank you for helping me today," she said quietly. Maybe it was too close for comfort, and maybe he could smell her mint gum breath from the foot of distance. He wouldn't say anything. "And thank you for ... getting along with him."  
  
He smiled. Dumbly. Tenderly.  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _ **Maybe it's okay to not alwaze be comfertable**_  
  
Arthur got home, got his mother her meds and her late dinner, nodding along to her weak protests about the late hour and _Happy, I'm too tired for dinner, where were you all day?_  
  
a cigarette was crushed and sucked between his dry lips, filtered down to a proper size. A pathetic pile of ash littered the kitchen counter as he hummed to himself, as alive and tuned into himself as he'd been in a long time.  
  
 _Some day I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me ..._  
  
Even devoid of stars, even in a murky, inky blackness, Arthur couldn't remember the last time he saw a sky in Gotham so clear and cloudless.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The cars streaking past Gotham City Hall had become a familiar crescendo and decrescendo of ambiance that Arthur learned to count to pass the minutes by until the maroon Cadillac strained to a halt.  
  
Fifty-four red stoplights today. He counted, alternatively puffing his cigarette on every green light. A young couple with a baby had walked in and walked out in the time that he waited.  
  
"Daddy!"  
  
He tossed his cigarette on instinct, blowing the smoke out just as she reached him for a hug. Standing up and pulling her in, their backs curled, a perfect symmetry of concave and convex as they laughed mirthfully.  
  
"Oh gosh, you smell like apples," he commented. "Do I still smell like garbage?"  
  
She shook her head, stifling a laugh at the self-derision.  
  
He set her down upright, moving forward to grab her red backpack. He was a little taken aback to see Keith in her mother's place, reaching the bag out to him by a strap.  
  
It took a second for him to reciprocate and grab it.  
  
 _Tolerate him. Tolerate it._  
  
Lifting Carrie into the air, feeling fractionally less flustered as her arm wrapped around his shoulder for leverage, Arthur watched him walk back to the driver's door wordlessly. There was a moment where they looked at each other.  
  
Arthur nodded before he turned to walk back home, hiking her further up on his hip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am obsessed with this design of a Glinda the Good Witch costume for Carrie's costume (sorry sorry, I'm a huge Wizard of Oz nerd lmaooo)  
> https://makeit-loveit.com/halloween-costumes-2014-glinda-the-good-witch-from-wizard-of-oz
> 
> @meghbruarts on tumblr made a lovely art piece for me for this chapter. Unfortunately this damn website makes it terribly complicated to post but I highly, highly recommend checking out their horror gallery on their page.


	20. Have Gun, Will Travel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ** MAJOR CONTENT WARNING, THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS HARD SMUT THAT MADE ME CHANGE THE STORY RATING LMAO **

"Can't I come with you to the hospital? You said you like me seeing and talking to the other kids. It makes them feel better."  
  
Carrie's bellyaching was marked by the discordant sounds of her little teeth crushing a buttered bagel and the hiss of the cool sink tap. As of the past eight days, hot water had routinely become scarce between the hours of eight and eleven in the morning, necessitating room-temperature showers before work. It wasn't fun but he'd survive.  
  
Washing dishes in cold water was nostalgic, though. Not as terrible as it had been in the frigid winter with a screaming seven-month-old on his wife's hip.  
  
"I got a really tight schedule today, Peanut," he explained, not for the first time. "A birthday party that ends at six and then I gotta hop across town to get to the hospital by six-thirty. I don't think you wanna be on all those smelly buses, do you? Wouldn't you rather spend time with your friend Heather and her dad -- get a break from my face?"  
  
"Well why can't I stay with Nana today?" Her voice shot up in that irritating high whine, suggestive in that she knew she'd utilized it to her advantage by age five to get what she wanted. "I could be real quiet and make soup for us and we could watch TV."  
  
"Carrie, Nana's migraines are making her sick. She just wants to rest today."  
  
Rest just as she did yesterday and the day before, giving him the advantage of an excuse to leave at the cost of his exacerbated anxiety and guilt of leaving her alone. Penny couldn't rest without her pills to calm her nerves due to the constant rough ambiance of fighting, screaming, fucking, television, or the myriad of all four surrounding them on all sides. She couldn't take her pills without getting even _sicker_. _Then_ they got noise complaint notices due to the sounds of nausea and Arthur's raucous laughter. Lather, rinse, repeat.  
  
She did not know just how stomach-churningly _terrified_ Arthur often got at the thought of his young child walking in on a cold, dead corpse in a floral robe in what _was_ her childhood bedroom. The chance of it, the inability to escape those stakes in his povert-stricken shambles, made him want to die more often than not.  
  
Carrie shrugged, raising her brows in consideration and concealing them in the tousle of her bangs. Her heel clicked rhythmically, a little irritatingly, against the counter drawer that always refused to close.  
  
"Pills this morning?" she asked, prodding the air with a finger of warning.  
  
"I got my pills down, thank you," he ragged, sparing her a charmed look, if not a little tired. "You keep nagging me, miss, and I'll have to add on an eighth bottle."  
  
He could if his insurance could afford it. The medication didn't do shit anyway, besides maintain routine and keep his libido low. He hallucinated less than he used to, but at the cost of his ability to stay asleep and keep food in his system. A hand for a leg. Arthur was wary about the dry toast he managed this morning, but it stayed down.  
  
Through the breakfast nook, the homey ding of the Jeopardy board announced, just loud enough for their ears but discreet enough to not wake his ailing mother one wall over, _"Fifties TV for eight-hundred: his card read, 'Have gun, will travel'."_  
  
They answered _"What is the Paladin"_ in tandem, the register of their voices craggy with sleep (or one's lack thereof). Arthur's eyes flashed at her in surprise, one cheek of her mouth stuffed like a chipmunk but grinning contentedly. Her lashes licked at the apex of her pallid cheeks, where a dark pink blaze ran down to her jaw; evidence of ten good, quiet hours of sleep.  
  
He scrubbed at a stain on the bowl, the feeling of minute pride swelling so deeply that it poured out of him and manifested into the physical. It pounded in his ear drums, overtaking whatever question Art Fleming asked his contestants afterward.  
\- - - -  
  
It was refreshing to drop Carrie off at a friend's house and be greeted by a fellow parent who knew how to _act_ like he liked Arthur.  
  
Brendan Flynn was like an aging golden retriever: he had the build to knock Arthur into the earth if he put in any half-effort, but he smiled and extended a happy hand instead. The grip was firm but not painful; nothing like the smarmy teachers who subtly wiped their hands on kerchiefs out of his view at parent-teacher nights as he stood beside his more smartly-dressed ex.  
  
"I believe my family sat in front of yours at the concert last week," the man said, letting the two girls pass beyond the doorsill into the apartment's little living room. "Heather and Carrie sang together."  
  
"Yeah, they ... yeah."  
  
Under the man's arm, Arthur could see the girls rounding a low-level coffee table, devastating the contents of an old jigsaw puzzle box that rattled and clashed against hollow cardboard. There was a Bible on the table; in the dim switch of the apartment's living room, Arthur saw its gold-tinted title. He didn't know what about it put his heart at ease, but he felt his shoulders lighten. Moral righteousness that Arthur himself had misplaced some time ago? He wasn't sure.  
  
"Does she have food allergies?" Brendan asked, and Arthur's attention was brought back in as many seconds with the shake of a head. "I'm not much of a home cook myself, and ..." He gestured to the pudge of his stomach, hidden under a grey sweatshirt. "... I was planning on just ordering in something for the three of us. Is she allowed to have take-out?"  
  
"We -- I ... we, uh ... we try to limit it, but ... yeah, she is," he stumbled. His consciousness was warring with the man in front of him and Carrie's amiable giggle, chasing after her friend in pursuit of the puzzle, disappearing behind a hall corner. "Uhm ... no food allergies," he remembered, screwing his eyes shut momentarily in thought. "But latex ... latex powder, so um, if she needs a Band-Aid, latex-free. I think they --"  
  
"Both have it, yeah," the man smiled, swiping a strip of platinum blonde hair back in its gelled position atop his head. For a lounging day, he certainly seemed to be trying to maintain an appearance. "Heather mentioned it."  
  
Arthur nodded, tight-lipped in consideration of his next move.  
  
"My last gig ends at seven-thirty, but ..." His leg bounced nervously, aching the heel of his shoe into a clear indent. He refused to allow Joss to satisfaction of seeing him in new shoes. "I still gotta get back and change outta my clothes and ... p -- punch out and drop my suit off at the cleaners ..."  
  
Brendan nodded, his eyes narrowing in a rosy, dare he say it _amiable_ smile. Arthur's hands curled in around the front of his person, the muscles in his face softening.  
  
"Arthur, I'm a school principal," he mentioned. "I understand the undue stress of not getting out at the moment's convenience. We're not planning on throwing Carrie out on the street if you're not here by eight o'clock."  
  
Arthur laughed at this, breathy and warming his thin lips in its relief. He hadn't cause to believe they would, but the reassurance was nice.  
  
"I -- I thought you were ... um, a p -- priest?" he queried, pushing a brow down against his left eyelid. For Mr. Flynn being only two inches over Arthur, he seemed imposingly big.  
  
The man nodded, smiling down at his shoes briefly.  
  
"I _was_ a priest," he acknowledged. A quiet orchestra of high giggles and nonsense singing and a whirring VCR blurred the inflection of his speech. "In the Catholic faith, I couldn't marry after my ordination. Fortunately the woman I was set to marry was a Protestant. I took her religion and and she took my name."  
  
Arthur nodded, accepting the explanation with dim understanding. Religion had never been of big concern in his and Joss' relationship, outside the necessity of affording a decently-priced chapel wedding. Carrie was baptized in a Catholic church, but attempting to remember which one was beyond his capacity.  
  
"The woman you were ... set to marry?" he asked, the phrase hitting him with untidy curiosity. "Not --?"  
  
"Heather's mother, yes," he nodded. "It was ... an arranged marriage. We divorced two years ago, but it was amicable."  
  
Arthur's waning curiosity was looming well over the precipice of some place it didn't belong. He hated anyone asking about his own divorce, or any of the preceding or following events. A few weeks off work had subjected him to more curiosity from his colleagues than in the four years he'd been there collectively beforehand. Nobody knew how to _mind their fucking business._  
  
"I gotta get going," Arthur said quickly, unsure of his self-restraint to keep his questions reserved for himself. "Gig in two hours. Uh, I gave you the emergency contacts?"  
  
"Your home and work and your wife's phones -- yes, I have them."  
  
"I'll call if I have time between gigs. Thank you _so much,_ Mr. Flynn."  
  
"Brendan, please," he grinned, reaching out to extend his hand once again. Arthur's fingers pulsed a furious red in the grip. "We should expect you around seven-thirty?"  
  
"Seven-thirty or eight."  
  
Taking in a deep breath, trying to control his voice and maintain some courtesy for the sake of the man's neighbors, "Carrie, I'm leaving for work, I'll see you later tonight!"  
  
 ** _"Bye, Daddy, I love you!"_** rang shrill and bouncy through the apartment, making good use of the echo in the plaster walls. A booming orchestral opening suggested sweeping grandeur, and a migraine that was not his for once.  
  
"Have fun listening to the Cowardly Lion for the next four hours," he joked, beginning to turn. A laugh followed his trail, lower in register and much more satisfying to not be his own.  
  
"Alright. Have a good day at work."  
  
Arthur didn't stop walking -- to do so would ensure a tenant calls the police for a _strange-looking loiterer_ \-- but a smile unknowingly wedged itself into the slightest corners of his mouth.  
  
Nobody ever, _ever_ instructed him to have a good day.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Why do you get a role with speaking parts and I don't?"  
  
Two girls lay in the furthermost corners in the bottom of a bunk bed, their backs arched and elbows perched for support. Carrie's big toe tapped in even intervals against the white wall of Heather's bedroom. The folded corner of the Mystery Inc. blanket lay on her head where it provided a fort for the pair. The puzzle lay forgotten on the attached desk.  
  
"You have a role with a name," Carrie countered, not taking her eyes off the screen. This was the first she'd ever seen any of her friends have a real Rossville TV in their room, all to themselves. "Last year you were a reporter and didn't have a name."  
  
"I had a name," Heather said, nudging Carrie's elbow with her own. "I called myself Barbara Walters, but I kept it to myself 'cause nobody asked. Now I have a name but I'm _Toto!"_  
  
"My mom can make you a dog costume if I ask. I didn't even tell her I'm playing Aunt Em, too, 'cause I knew she'd make my witch dress so fancy." Her arm flattened against the bed, and she rested her chin in the folded form, eyes trained in on Dorothy Gale falling into the pig pen. "She was an actress in her school drama club 'til she had me."  
  
"You told me she's an adventure agent."  
  
"An _insurance_ agent," Carrie corrected. Her eyes rolled derisively into her head, taking in the sights of the small room, the walls decorated by a Jackson 5 poster and school drawings, and a small cross just on the closet's plaster edge.  
  
"It's _really_ boring," she continued. "She and her boyfriend are called social ... social somethings, 'cause they make a lot of money," she waved off. "But they have boring parties with people from work and the food doesn't taste good, and she drops me off at my grandparents' house a lot because she works four days a week."  
  
"Can't you stay with her boyfriend?" Rivulets of creamy blonde spilled onto the orange bed sheet as Heather's chin tilted in her palm. "Doesn't he live with you?"  
  
Carrie's arms flexed, brows shooting up in consideration that could not be hidden. Her hair was groomed in a neat ponytail on her head.   
  
"I don't wanna talk about him," she answered plainly. "He sucks."  
  
The blanket's security from the window's flimsy white blinds obscured the violent blush that tinged Heather's chubby cheeks, her wide forehead.  
  
"My daddy says that we don't say that word."  
  
"Oh," she said simply, mouse-quiet and eyes diverting from the screen. Her brows stayed up. Absentmindedly, her nimble finger trailed along the near-unseeable scars trailing along both sides of her forearm. Stupid birds.  
  
Taking a deep, stuffy breath into her chest, Carrie pushed herself onto her knees and experimentally pressed her hands against the bottom side of the top bunk.  
  
"But my mom used to do plays and musicals in high school and college," she asserted. "Before she and my dad started dating, he saw her in the Sound of Music show at their college, 'cause she was Liesl. He went the next night, too, and bought her flowers, but he was too scared to walk up and give 'em to her. I have entertainment blood 'cause my dad's a comedian."  
  
Heather's attention was stolen from the television, distancing Dorothy's low-level crooning of rainbows and troubles melting like lemon drops to background fodder. Her dusky eyes narrowed.  
  
"I thought you said he was a clown. When Harpo the Clown came into class a few months ago, you told me you saw him at your dad's work one time."  
  
"He works at hospitals and stuff, to cheer up the sick kids," she said quickly, the heat of interrogation licking at her neck, splashing it with embarrassment. "He's going there today. But he's gonna be a comedian one day. I help him with his stand up."  
  
"How can he be a comedian if he laughs so much, Carrie?" Heather asked, shifting now to lie on her back, toeing the slats of the top bunk's support beams with her toes.  
  
 _"We're working on it,"_ she snapped, spent by the line of questioning. She took in a puff of quick, bashful breath, feeling sweat tinge her tank top from their earlier exertion and the conversation.  
Surprised by the outburst, Heather looked at her friend for a moment, considering her words carefully.  
  
"My mom's not a comedian, but she's half-Cambodian."  
  
Carrie's eyes narrowed, fixing her friend with some interest as she stretched her tired back.  
  
"Isn't that Asian? You don't look Asian," Carrie noted. Most Asian people she saw in the late night movies on TV didn't have long blonde hair and light skin.  
  
"I got my mom's eyes, and her smile," Heather explained, their interest in the movie now thoroughly spent. "And when I was born I had black hair like her. Daddy says when I'm older my hair might get darker again and I'll look more like my mom. He said I looked like Mom's twin when I was born."  
  
"My mom and grandma said I looked like my _dad's_ twin when I was born, 'cause of my eyes," Carrie said. "How come your parents can get along and be nice to each other all the time but mine can't?"  
  
Heather shrugged, her shoulders chubby and innocuous in their mechanism. A strip of light, unshielded by the blanket fort, warmed Carrie's bare leg.  
  
"Dunno, they just do," Heather said innocently. "They were married for seven years before they had me -- that's a _long_ time. They never fought, they just didn't talk very much before Daddy got this apartment for us. But they go to dinner two times every month and we all four go to breakfast after church. That's when I go with the other parent."  
  
"All four?"  
  
"Me and my mom and my dad, and my mom's boyfriend." As an afterthought, the words caught in a bite of her chubby pink lip, she added quietly, "I'd like my dad to bring his boyfriend, but that's not allowed."  
  
Carrie's brows shot up. Her ears burned at the new knowledge, her nerves processing it quicker than her head.  
  
"Your dad has a boyfriend?" she questioned, keeping her voice low but urgent. "Is that allowed?"  
  
"Daddy says nobody needs to know 'cept yourself and God," Heather stated, sound well-rehearsed. Carrie had to wonder how tightly she kept this secret that she sounded so sure of her words.  
  
"So your dad does all the hand-holding and kissing stuff, and going out on dates?" she asked.  
  
"Yeah, but most of the time if I'm here they just sit on the couch and watch TV. He makes gross vegetable foods for dinner, except sometimes he makes green bean casserole. He promised to let me have a whole dish on Thanksgiving."  
  
"That's gross," Carrie chided.  
  
"Green beans or my dad's boyfriend?"  
  
"Adults kissing and doing that stuff _at all,"_ she sneered, finally releasing herself to rest on her stomach again. Heather shot her a funny glance.  
  
"You don't like anybody like that at all? What about Jackson Francis?"  
  
Carrie's nose scrunched, her little nostrils flaring in remembrance.  
  
"I saw him eating glue in Mr. Hirsch's art class last week. If I like anybody like ... _that_ ... maybe Tiny Tim."  
  
At Heather's question of _"Who?",_ Carrie's head craned in incredulity, rolling onto her back to stretch like a lazy cat.  
  
"The ukulele player? He sang Tiptoe Through the Tulips," she clarified. "He was on Murray Franklin sometimes back in the seventies and my dad has recordings of him. I like his long hair and big nose."  
"So ... he looks like your dad?"  
  
Before she could process the remark, much less respond, a single-knuckle knock interrupted them. The door creaked open, revealing Mr. Flynn's hulking but smiling form in the doorway.  
  
"Knock knock," he said. "Her Highness, Queen Heather has a plate of cucumbers if you girls hungry."  
  
 _"Yes,_ cucumbers!" the girl exclaimed, sliding out of the bunk to make a beeline for the plate.  
  
"I'm gonna be ordering from Ginger Roll Bistro tonight, so think about what you want," Mr. Flynn said, pulling the door to a near-close. "And you _will_ be eating a salad tonight, young lady."  
  
Heather groaned in mock-offense, setting the plate of cucumbers on the floor between herself and Carrie. The door closed.  
  
"Your dad makes you eat healthy food all the time?" Carrie asked.  
  
It's not that they couldn't _afford_ healthy food, and certainly Daddy tried to make her understand the importance of a healthy fruit or vegetable with her breakfast and dinner, and Mom more often than not tossed her apples and oranges if she complained about being hungry, but Daddy never gave her _whole cucumbers_ and ranch as a snack. She was much more content to her bowls of Sugar Stars.  
  
"Mostly just when his boyfriend is here, or if I didn't eat my greens with dinner. He says that God gave us healthy bodies and we should take care of them to make Him proud of us."  
  
"... Hm."  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur was the only clown at Ha-Ha's not only happy to, but voluntarily _wanting_ to entertain the sick kids in the hospitals.  
  
If his joy and laughter mission in life was relegated to children -- the only people who laughed _with_ him and _got the joke_ \-- he could deal with it, enjoy it, until he got to the top.  
  
When Carrie was born, his haze of euphoria apparently sent him buzzing through the hospital, holding his newborn daughter and tearfully thanking all their personal doctors and nurses for _"taking good care of my girls. **My girls."**_ Though the memory evaded him, his mother-in-law had snuck in a few pictures of the overwhelmed father and his sleepy, swaddled bundle, who promptly peed on his arm and necessitated an anxious return home for a new shirt.  
  
He loved hospital assignments since then. The anticipation of such visits, knowing the kids buzzed and chattered about getting to see Dr. Carnival, boosted his morale for long enough to drive him to study more balloon animal techniques. Because of his resident toy aficionado at home, he'd added dinosaurs and rabbits to his repertoire.  
  
 **DR. ARTHUR**  
 **DEPARTMENT OF LAUGHOLOGY**  
 **SPECIALTY: BALLOONS  
**  
Jocelyn always said going into a clown business would be a meager, embarrassing existence -- that she didn't wanna have to hide her husband. Now he was a doctor, and a damn good one. Better than her original field.  
  
He was good until he wasn't.  
  
The birthday party went by without incident. Although the birthday girl seemed a little well past the age of wanting a clown there, the younger kids enjoyed his set of magic tricks, and he'd produced a few laughs out of the shy one stuck in the back corner when he brought her up to be his assistant in the disappearing dime and penny act. The isolated ones always needed more of Carnival's attention -- he hoped the Normals would understand.  
  
The hospital gig started out as it always had: the beacon of triumphant introduction via his squeaky clown horn erupting the ward in claps and high cheers _("Yay, Mr. Carnival! Carnival's here!")_. The unlucky few stuck in restrictive casts had asked for his autograph. He inwardly swooned at the word, bashful and tinged through his makeup at such a position of nobility. Not since signing his marriage license and his daughter's birth certificate did he make so sure his penmanship was at top level.  
  
He'd made balloon animals for whoever asked, whether it be the kids or their stuffed toy friends, and he was well past the point of caring about the blisters forming at his bony finger knuckles whenever a new child would smile at him and ask. He played his little ukulele, sitting on a bed alongside a young girl with dreadlocks, and felt like king of the ward as he led the kids through Do-Re-Mi, inwardly excited to see the nurses really getting into it. He performed funny bone exams, vowing to do his best to leave no patient untreated without a spoonful of giggles.  
  
He enjoyed himself too much. Too happy and he knew it, and stomped too hard, displaying the .38 that fell out of his trousers and was kicked across the ward with a horrified yelp. In a desperate swoop, he held the gun in his provided doctor's coat, eyes darting around the ward, convincing someone, anyone, God, that it was a prop. A Chaplinesque sad clown routine that maybe didn't belong in a kids' hospital but _please believe me, please don't kick me out, I would never, ever hurt those kids, I have a little girl myself, it's a part of my act, please, **pleasedon'tcallmywork--  
**_  
Randall didn't tell funny jokes.  
  
Randall _lied.  
_  
The .38 had been for protection, but not Arthur's. _Randall wanted to get rid of him._  
  
And he accepted the gun. He accepted, _accepted,_ shot a hole at his daughter's bedroom wall and kept it in the house anyway instead of throwing it right the fuck into the garbage, accepted the deal of his ego for his logic, and he dropped the gun in a hospital ward, in a room of twenty sick and dying kids, and dropped the anvil of shame right on his feet.  
  
His body got on the subway before his soul did, leaving a few stops in between for it to catch up. He didn't know how long it took him to breathe in enough to move to a forward position, turning his attention away from the white smudge of window graffiti that it took far too long to notice said **EAT SHIT AND DIE!  
**  
Two passengers were traded for three, but only Arthur's eyes took note of it in the physical. His head was half-screaming so loud but so pitifully, the buzz of Hoyt screaming at him ringing like the tinnitus he'd developed years earlier from a colicky baby at level with his ear.  
  
The baby. His baby. _My baby, how the fuck am I going to tell Carrie, how the fuck am I going to feed her, I have to spend her own money on bills, Carriecarriecarriecarriecarriecarrie--_  
  
 _ **Mom.**_ Mom and her pills, and he needed to ... to stay in the house to take care of her, reassure her ... he needed to find more clown agencies or he would go insane at another factory job, but how the _fuck,_ who the fuck would hire the clown who brought a gun into a children's ward --  
  
He blinked slowly, only capable of one eyelid at a time, and sighed. Maybe he should've done Baa, Baa, Black Sheep for the kids instead.  
  
Brain caught up with body, both sluggish and slow going in their motions. As coherence came to the forefront, three tidy-looking, unsteady young men cajoled in a tight circle. The only sitting member had his eyes pivoted on a young woman and her book -- the only other occupant of the cart.  
  
Arthur watched, eyes shifting.  
  
"Hey, you want some french fries?" Definitely drunk. Said fry was procured from a bag in the seated young man's hand, toyed with between his greased fingers.  
  
Not a glance was spared from the woman in question.  
  
"Hellooo? I'm talking to you," he persisted. "Hey."  
  
Arthur's eye twitched, his dim interest churning a twist of his gut with itchy, stuffy anxiety. It wouldn't do him, do _her_ good if he spoke. _Fucking coward._  
  
"Don't ignore him," another one said -- young still, blonde and rattier in the face. "He's being _nice_ to you!"  
  
The weaponized fry was tossed at the poor woman. Dark eyes found his own, signaling a want for help that he couldn't deliver. His caked brows upturned in pity. He had a child to pick up.  
  
 _ **Would you still be quiet if it was her?**_  
  
A bashful laugh, pillowy in its suffocation, followed him when he turned his head.  
  
Not now, not now, _not nownownownownow --_  
  
A yell of a laugh ripped from his throat, painful and brassy. There was nothing pleasant to it, and as he shrunk further in on his person, wishing to disappear in the subway seat and let the steel machinery rip his body to bloody ribbons, he knew he'd caught their attention as they stopped laughing.  
  
 _Your daughter could bring home someone like this one day and you're just sitting there, the useless, jobless coward, what are you gonna do, **what are --**_  
  
The shriek of steel and metal hissing in grinding horror could not drown out the horror of Arthur's own laughter. The disgust in his screaming cackle, proving to be too much, forced the woman to her feet.  
  
 _Please, please leave, please ...  
_  
 _"Is something **funny,** asshole?"_  
  
The door slammed shut, caging him in with the hungry coyotes. He only laughed harder, too scared to focus on breathing. Every time he shifted his attention, they inched nearer, one of their voices growing louder and stabbing him with mock-song.  
  
The sweaty wig cap was stolen from his head. Hot, sticky breath pervaded his bare jaw as a jeering, choking laugh was directed at his left ear.  
  
"So, buddy, tell us ... _what's so fuckin' funny?"_  
  
Patches of black tainted his vision -- the terrible negligence of Gotham's subways. Arthur feared momentarily that his emotions were making him go blind. He sucked in a hard, painful, phlegmy breath, pushing a great bag of nails into his lungs.  
  
"I have a ..." he choked. _"-- I have a condition --"_  
  
His arm jerked forward, his distended shoulder nearly ripped from its socket at the younger man in front of him yanked his work back from his grasp. He lunged forward weakly, ready to paw and beg if need be to retrieve it, before a pair of meatier hands pulled him back by the elbows.  
  
"I'll tell you what ya have, you asshole!" one of them exclaimed. His attention came at full force, as well as his indignation, as his arms flailed. Helplessly he watched his bag being tossed between the two free assailants, Arthur held back in a horrible twist of monkey in the middle. He didn't need this. His job as a clown was done for.  
  
A furious, comically large shoe lurched forward, taking aim at a stomach and hitting only air.  
  
"Hold him steady, hold him steady."  
  
Arthur flailed and flailed, lurching and lashing like some kind of chained chicken.  
  
Pain didn't settle into his face until he hit the ground. Feet in his back, his legs, violent and each one more forceful than the last, whipped the blood out of his nose, tinging his tongue and the back of his aching throat with distraught, red rage.  
  
 ** _"Stay down, freak!"_**  
  
Arthur's teeth may have bared. He didn't know. Couldn't see. Everything was red. Red. Black. White. Red. Red. Red. Red.  
  
Everything was color when red sprayed the wall of the train cart.  
  
He was still being kicked, mercilessly and furiously, even as their feet retracted.  
  
One ran, screaming, as Arthur fired his gun twice, the train door now a stained-glass window of ugly primal protection.  
  
Arthur stood, feeling disoriented and everything and nothing. He rocked from side to side, not realizing the train had ground to a distressed halt. The horrified beating and screaming transcended outside of his own head, belonging now to the last man standing.  
  
He grabbed his bag again, his clown shoes lead heavy, and took aim with his gun.  
  
The man made a run for it, a hand poised laughably awkward on the back of his thigh, looking near pissing himself with blood. Arthur pursued him, his movements completely out of control as his soul detached.  
  
His soul watched.  
  
When four shots rang out, cut through by a pathetic scream of incoherent begging, his soul may have winced. He wouldn't have felt it.  
  
He blinked sluggishly, feeling himself coming back in depleted breaths. Black ooze seeped nearer to the tips of his shoes where the man lay half-crawling up the subway steps, frozen now in a permanent amber.  
  
"Shit," he muttered, pressing his fingers into the bush of his hair. _"Shit ..."_  
  
His ears rang. Rang. Rang. Rang.  
  
Rang. Rang.  
  
Screamed.  
  
 _Screamed her scream._  
  
 _Fuck._ _Carrie!  
_  
 ** _CARRIE!  
_**  
He ran.  
  
The gasoline that spread along his lungs was set ablaze and blistered his stomach in the heat as he ran aimlessly, as fast as his legs could carry him.  
  
He couldn't go to her. Not like this. He couldn't _not_ go to her.  
  
As he passed through a tunnel, his shadow grew larger, leering at him in its fiery amber and black temptation. He didn't look back. Its laugh was not his own, but high and raspy.  
  
He slammed a bathroom door open with his distended shoulder, seeing it as the only place where the shadow couldn't find him. In one instant, he was covered in black and green, chilled and juxtaposed to the flare of pain spreading through his spine, his neck, the spilled rivulet of blood from his nostrils.  
  
He breathed.  
  
He breathed.  
  
He breathed, and ... _he felt it.  
_  
The air of his movements, _living. Moving._  
  
Consoling. Congratulating.  
  
She wasn't screaming anymore. She was _cheering._  
  
The pain of fire in his chest that destroyed his insides was not his enemy. It no longer hurt him. He lifted his arm and trained his eyes on the heavens, blurred and green and dingy. Only the moon could see him.  
  
It was _protection._  
  
His arms spread as he bowed to the man in the mirror. Whether he was roaring for himself or the world on his shoulders split in half and he was engulfed in the fire of joy and devastation ... he was _alive._  
  
 _ **Hello, handsome.**_  
  
\- - - -  
  
Not for the first time, Carrie's eyes focused in on the clock above the kitchen sink, its rhythm as exacerbating to her mood as it was cathartic in distraction.  
  
Daddy had never been this late picking her up before. Maybe a half-hour to an hour, but never two. It had taken an hour of waiting on the furthermost corner of the couch, sitting with Heather through two reruns of Mr. Rogers old video records, before she conceded that his lateness could only run her anxiety up so much. When the delivery boy dropped off their dinner, an hour late himself, she'd sat bolt upright and then deflated in disappointment.  
  
At the dinner table, it took several seconds for her to come to long enough to see that two hands were being extended her way, both of them attached to expectant, warm smiles. Hesitating, she took the both of them. Heather's hand was cold and clammy as she'd always known it to be. Mr. Flynn's was warm and dry, as comforting as her father's, but heartier.  
  
"Let us bow or heads and let the Lord acknowledge our worship," Mr. Flynn said, taking his daughter's hand as well as Carrie's.  
  
She looked between the two of them curiously, their heads bowed, eyes closed.  
  
Didn't people typically only do this in movies, or at Christmas mass?  
  
"We give you thanks, Father ..." Mr. Flynn began. "... for this food which you have given us, so that we may continue to nourish and grow into sound body and sound mind. We ask of you so humbly that you let us recognize our special privilege in this dinner, when so many less fortunate in our beautiful Gotham City do your work on less fulfilling sustenance. Look over them and guide them to have a better tomorrow than they had today. Amen."  
  
Carrie's face tinted a baby pink, and she looked again between the table's occupants, who gave the signal to eat by their own casualness of digging into their plates. Biting off the urge to correct him because _technically_ the Chinese restaurant offered the food, but knowing that would be rude, Carrie bit into a piece of sweet and sour chicken.  
  
These people were nice, _very_ nice. But she only wanted one person. He could have at least called. They were supposed to watch Murray Franklin together after weeks of missing it.  
  
She reached for a fortune cookie, sitting in a small, innocuous pile of wrappers in the middle of the table, and split it open. The cookie was dry and stuck to her tongue, a little jagged and painful to manage down. But a cookie was a cookie to an eight-year-old girl.  
  
 **Someone wants the best for you -- listen to them**  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur had never enjoyed his pain as much as he did now.  
  
There was shame. Shame that he knew her location like the freckled pattern on the back of his hand. But god _damn,_ he didn't care right now. An electric current in his rigid sternum carried him to her without any thought besides _I'm hungry, hungry, **hungry, hungry, where are you, where are you**_  
  
He set upon the brothel, all but kicking the glass door in with his shoe, and didn't stop his heaving, fist-balled haste until he was knocking at her door.  
  
$130 was transferred into her unsuspecting palm as Arthur took aim at her neck, barely getting so much as a "Hey there, sweetie" out of her before the door was shut. She gasped in surprise. His trousers, loose as they were, put a painful strain on his pulsating erection when his hands snaked down her bare belly, hot as desert sand against the pads of his fingers, and settled on her hips.  
  
His movements, mechanical, hard, not _sweetie,_ reversed them so he was sitting on the bed, detaching his lips only as he pulled Rose into his lap. A smear of saliva and makeup intermixed on her neck, coating it in blood red. He'd taken some liberty to clean off the tinge of blood from his nose before showing up.  
  
She smiled and laughed, setting her hands on his shoulders as though he was just another guy.  
  
He was not just Another Anything. Not a Normal and not their whipping boy.  
  
"You are a live wire tonight, aren't you?" she asked, bouncy and sweet and _stop being so fucking cute and innocent, I know you._  
  
"I don't -- I don't have a condom," he said suddenly, his brain returning in fragmented bits. The soft kiss he placed on her collarbone, tasting spicy vanilla that made him as heady and hard as ever, brought her arm around his head, raking her fingers through his damp curls.  
  
"I got an IUD," she assured him, and he took a vague note of attempting to remember what that could've meant. "You don't need a condom."  
  
 _Good._  
  
The tenderness of his kiss on her collarbone, trailing his tongue up over the sensitive nerves of her neck, got an amused squeal out of her. Her hips rolled deliciously over the strain in his pants, her thighs milky and lead-heavy in his lap, the thicket of hair brushing the apex of her pink panties wild and dark red. The sight of it brought Arthur's teeth into the mix of his kiss, turning it into a full assault of her senses. The strained giggle broke into a strident moan at he bit into her shoulder.  
  
"Take your hair down," he said gruffly, his hands roving over exposed hip and belly, stroking a curve with his thumb. "I want your hair down."  
  
"Why, you gonna use it to make me squeal?"  
  
Nevertheless, she pulled her ponytail away, giggling at a muffled _"I might"_ as his arms wrapped tightly around her middle, pulling her chest to his.  
  
When she was thrown, it was with a sharp squeal of surprise, and a giggle as she bounced slightly on the bed. His stomach flipped, eyes depleting as he watched her thumb toy with one of her clothed buds, her smile reeking of enjoyment. His nostrils flared.  
  
 _Stop laughing at me._  
  
Shifting, Arthur crawled onto the bed, moving to lock her legs between his own, his mouth hungry and hovering just over the mounds of her breasts, standing proud beneath the flimsy fabric of her yellow tube top.  
  
"You look fucking _insane,_ sweetie," Rose said, words popping. Her face betrayed blush on the highs of her cheeks, spread to her cute nose.  
  
No, not _cute._ Arthur didn't fuck cute girls, he fucked sexy girls.  
  
"I hope so," he admitted, stooping down to flatten his tongue on the underside of her left breast, teasing her with the barrier of her shirt. "Don't call me sweetie."  
  
"What?"  
  
He descended lower, placing a soft kiss trail along her flattened belly, taking a moment to dip the tip of his tongue on the bulb of her silver navel ring, its taste warm and metallic and sparking him to life.  
  
"Call me by my name ..." It occurred to him, in the four visits he'd paid to her in the past year, he'd been too afraid to give his name. He didn't know if Rose was her name at all. As the musty scent of her sweet cunt edged nearer, he felt his care leaving. "... call me Arthur."  
  
"Arthur," she repeated, testing it out as she pushed herself onto her elbows. He nudged her knees apart, getting a glimpse of the tinge of wetness in her underwear, way too old and concealing. "You wanna kiss me, Arthur?"  
  
He nodded, his tongue heavy and wet -- a sponge in his mouth. A warm breath caressed her thighs, and the mound of red hair sticking out. He felt her shiver, and he hastily ripped off his tie, forgetting his clown garb until it became too much of a noose around his neck. He all but ripped her underwear off, his hands shaking with practiced restrained.  
  
"Do it then," Rose insisted, lifting a leg to sway lazily, tracing the ridges of his bony ribs through his clothing. Arthur's fingers fumbled for the hem of her underwear, feeling slow as burning hell itself. "I don't let just any guy eat me out."  
  
He took that as his permission, and dipped his head in, the tip of his bulbous nose raking in the nostalgic Palmolive scent of her ginger hair and the feel of her damp little clit. When his mouth descended on her, his lips first kissing her edges before his tongue delved in to taste her inner muscle, a muffled grunt of appreciation made him look up to see her hand over her mouth, chest heaving.  
No, that will not do.  
  
While he'd settled his hands on either sides of her hips, intending to pull her as close to him as he could, her thighs shuddering like a butterfly's wings, he pulled a hand up to testily reach for her arm, yanking it away.  
  
"Make sounds," he implored, muffled himself as he licked a dewy stripe along her growing clit. He felt her writhe, her thighs threatening to crush him. Thank god he'd grabbed her hips. "I like -- I like your sounds."  
  
A soft moan, mousy and bashful in its interval. Her thighs were imprinted with the remnants of his ruined makeup, red and white smearing to a heavenly pink against her thighs and pubic hair. Arthur flattened his tongue against her clit, bringing out a mix of stifled groans and _"Fuck, Arthur."_ Dewy sweat sheened on her thighs, her beautiful tanned thighs, as his chin was coated with her arousal.  
  
He was delirious.  
  
Craning his head, his teeth nipped toyingly at her proud little clit, beating beneath him and pretty as a peach. With a high mewl of surprise, she came quickly, thighs trembling against his ears, stifling the sexy sound of it for him.  
  
The dribble of it running down Arthur's chin encouraged him to unbutton his shirt. He pulled himself to his knees, intoxicated by the sight of her near-naked form, stuttering to catch her breath, her legs spread and glistening with sweet incitement. Wiping his jaw with his discarded white undershirt, he smirked at the sight, a puff of light laughter escaping through his nostrils as he watched, unable to do anything else.  
  
 _I did this to her.  
_  
Rose looked up at him, still catching her breath, a hand on her forehead as she smiled.  
  
"Holy _fuck_ you're skinny, baby," she exclaimed, not wishing to sound rude and bring up the sweetie name he requested against. "Don't you ever eat?"  
  
"I did," he said, husky and wired. He yanked his trousers and underwear down easily, breaking free his erection from the painful fabric constraint. Hesitating on his next move for a moment, he looked down at himself, the head wet and angry, and Rose, her thighs smeared with his unfiltered influence.  
  
Crawling again, he dropped onto his back, stomach sinking into a concave dip as his hands found Rose's, pulling her over imploringly. His cock bobbed on the inward curve of his belly, dripping with precome. The closing and opening of his eyelids, rusty as steel, was languid and uncompromised by fear.  
  
"Ride me," he heaved, pushing himself onto his elbows.  
  
Though a leg obligingly draped her body over his, her sweet, wet pussy slick and spread for his view, she gazed at him with a lip-biting frown.  
  
"I'll break you," she objected.  
  
 _"I don't care,"_ he pleaded, a hand pressing into the small of her fleshy back to edge her forward when he was in a higher sitting position. The other hand toyed with his cock, proud to feel a throb in his webbed vein, and drew the slick head lazily against the long strip of her pussy, eliciting two gasps that tossed their heads back. "Rose ... _please."_  
  
At the repeated electric jolt of his cock head grazing her swelling clitoris, Rose pushed him off his elbows with a grunt, throwing off his control. She may have found it sexy, but as of the incoming two hours he'd bought himself, it was her job to show him the best and rile him. Fucking Arthur was probably like watching a fish die on land; lots of lying uselessly and some thrashing, but nothing extravagant.  
  
 _This,_ though.  
  
Rose grabbed his cock, hiding a shudder as her hand made contact with his own, and allowed her body to relax enough to push the first inch or so inside. She bit back a high mewl, relishing in the familiar burn, but beneath her, Arthur's eyes had screwed shut, a few mutterings of _"Fuck"_ and slurred, raspy moans growing closer together and in volume as she sunk down lower.  
  
"Don't shoot yourself off before I even get started, baby," she said, attempting to ease the veil of whatever the hell had him so wound up.  
  
A noise in the back of her throat hitched when she was fully rested on him, her beating clit buried from view in the messy union of red and black hair. She blew out a breath. Two years of this and she was still trying to get used to the feeling of throbbing in her.  
  
Slowly, lazily, she rolled her hips, allowing a moan that was more work than reality. She didn't like the slow love making type. These were her _clients._ Not her --  
  
"Fuck," Arthur sighed, eyes still closed. "Don't be soft."  
  
Happy to oblige, quickening herself to orchestrate the gentle spring-sound of the mattress, she said with exertion, "Well you're certainly not soft."  
  
"No joking," he insisted. The intense heat of her wet walls clenching around him caused his eyes to roll back with a low moan. His hands traveled along her body, not satisfied on just her hips. The blots of rose red makeup trailing from her stomach down to her bare privates caught his attention. "Tell me -- tell me it feels good."  
  
Her brow quirked, a burning sensation spreading throughout her middle region as she pressed her hands to his chest, stroking a small distended bone in his sternum, and drove forward faster. Her thighs flexed at the exertion. It reminded her of the burn of being on the track team in high school; grossly sweaty and wet, aching, but satisfying in the long run. Her knees drove into the bed as she rose up and down, trying hard not to focus on the thick head prodding a bundle of nerves. A slow, uneventful crescendo of the bed squeaking and her thighs and ass falling onto him halted as she found a steady rhythm.  
  
"Make it feel good," she bit out, her breath coming out in a hiss as her clit threatened to push her over the edge. An ocean roar of blood in her ears, a drum of war pounding as Arthur's eyes widened. His nose, cute and powder-white as it was, flared at the nostrils.  
  
He dug one palm into the bed, the other wrapping around her back, as he sat up. There was no adjustment period for the new angle, her clit now getting a full assault of damp pubic hair when he pushed up into her with a stifled grunt.  
  
Irritated by the boundary, Arthur grappled at the hems of her tube top, pulling it up to allow him access to her desperately hard nipples. Hungry still, he latched onto one, the groan above him encouraging the clamping of his teeth on the oversensitive nerve. Nimble fingers trailed through his hair, pulling and rewarding as his tongue ran along the bottom of an areola, furiously pink. With a lingering kiss, pulling the little mound of flesh with his lips, he let it go.  
  
"Fuck it," he muttered, his knees curling inward to give him perfect access to push her back. Such an act got a squeal of happy surprise out of her, almost as if she thought this was just a funny ride. The bed groaned at such a violent initiative.  
  
The laughter in her throat died down to a focused whimper when he was on her again, pulling her leg up without warning, inside her again. He wasn't sure if he blinked the entire time his pace sped up, so intoxicated with her sighs of dimple-grinned pleasure, her breasts bouncing. Her tube top was discarded and forgotten on the floor before he had climbed onto her again.  
  
"I love your dick," she whispered, eyes half-lidded but finding his own, not knowing his pupils were dilated to near-blackness.  
  
"Say it louder," he growled, dipping down to bite against her shoulder, the smell of vanilla nearly breaking him in his sensitivity. "Let them know."  
  
She moaned, overtaken in the feeling of his cock pistoning in and out of her, slick and delicious in its tight burn of her interior muscle, the stretch of the back of her thigh familiar and warm. Whoever occupied the next room didn't need a voice to piece together the implications of the creaking bed and his skin slapping against hers. Her long hair hung over the edge of the bed, a river of strawberry-colored carnage.  
  
"God, I _love_ your fucking _dick, Arthur,"_ she groaned. It came from a place inside her that buzzed her chest in satisfaction.  
  
Arthur growled into her neck, burning her skin with red and white, about ready to meet his end. He wasn't _Sweetie_ anymore. He _needed_ to fuck her. Needed to make sure she was real. Needed to make sure his name was heard.  
  
"Say my name again," he commanded, his tongue trailing the tender indents he'd made at the base of her neck. The winding feeling of adrenaline in his belly made him bring his head up, eyes closing as he drove into her harder, rewarded with a slight whimper at his movements. Her leg slipped from his shoulder and found his thigh.  
  
"Arthur -- _Arthur!_ I'm gonna come, baby, let me come on your dick."  
  
He grunted in agreement, his nose twitching as his brain short-circuited from the stimulation. Hard to believe he was once a twenty-year-old loitering a convenience store with a broad blush while his girlfriend had to buy a box of condoms for him.  
  
"You gonna come?" he rasped, looking down at the sprawl of her red hair, her mouth open in delirious euphoria. "You want me to come in you?"  
  
 _"Yes,"_ she exclaimed, high and bouncy. _"Yes!"_  
  
Her toes curled, brushing against his calves as his movements stilled. His palms were no longer his pillar of support. He brought himself down to his elbows, his chest against hers, the both of them trembling violently and hissing out low groans of esctasy as he kept himself buried as deep as he could, balling his fists as he felt her spasming and dripping against him.  
  
His brow twitched before he allowed himself to pull away and sit back. He blinked a few times, the overstimulation leaving him trembling at the tips of his fingers. Letting her leg drop lazily to preserve some semblance of modesty, Rose giggled. An orange ceiling light, terribly inefficient as it was to give them proper color hues, hummed in disapproval of their display.  
  
Arthur took in a deep breath, pulling his hair back as his eyes closed. Everything smelled like salty sweat and something musky that adhered to his nose. Garbage odor eeked in through the tightly-sealed window, through its stupid doily curtains.  
  
"I'll be right back," Rose announced, twisting her body to grab her tube top off the floor with a mirthful hum.  
  
"Where are you going?"  
  
She looked at him, a little incredulous, already tugging her panties back on and halfway to the door.  
  
"I gotta go wash up!" she stated matter-of-factly. "You got come and that fuckin' makeup all over me!"  
  
"But you ... I -- you look ..." He cleared his throat, sore now. "You look real when it's on."  
  
 _"You_ look fucking _crazy_ with it on," she said, brows raising with a pointed smile. "How 'bout you wash up, too, before you waste the two hours you paid for?"  
  
\- - - -  
  
Twenty minutes gave the room enough time to sufficiently air out. Arthur stood outside, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, looking more attuned to a demented guard than a client waiting for Rose to finish up in the bathroom down the hall.  
  
He did look demented. There was no semblance of any neat and tidy children's party clown left. His jackal grin spread all the way to his ear. White greasepaint spread down his neck, intermixed with his smile to make a salmon pink. Whatever shape was on his eyebrow was nowhere near a triangle. The bottom triangles had meshed with the red to make a light purple tinge.  
  
He sighed and cleaned up, too fuzzy to care too much for the little flecks of white crusted into his brow, or the red tint left behind on his face.  
  
Never did he think he'd be lying in bed with a woman again, confidently bare underneath a quilt, rubbing slow, delicate circles on her clitoral hood. It stood to attention under his touch, just deft enough that Rose shuddered but allowed him to continue, opening her thighs at the contact.  
  
"Why is your hair down there a natural red?" he asked, amused by her soft tremble.  
  
"I was born a redhead," she answered, her skin prickling with sweat she'd just wiped away.  
  
"So you were born with red hair and dyed your hair a different shade of red," he clarified. There was no complaint. He loved the color.  
  
"You gonna just talk to me or are you gonna fuck me again?" she snapped, her leg squirming at the increased pressure he put into his manipulations with his middle finger, intent on finding her pulse.  
  
"Maybe I like seeing you like this," he smiled, lifting his head onto his free palm. True, his shoulder was aching from the minutes-long mini-torture, and the ringing in his ears from earlier refused to stop, and he was essentially wasting his own money, but god _damn,_ did he enjoy seeing her in so much unstoppable rapture.  
  
 _I did this to her, I did this to her, I'm real, I'm **real**_  
  
The thought hit him then. Those three punks from the subway train could've killed him, left his broken, bleeding carcass curled up on the train and nobody would've noticed. They could've been the ones alive, doing unmentionable things to some poor woman. But he came out of it, for once in Lady Fortune's favor, fucking a beautiful woman to her own enjoyment. They were in body bags and he was the one on top.  
  
 _That's life._  
  
He sped up the circular motions, feeling her thighs squirm and her sweet cunt getting wet again.  
  
 _"Stop, **stop,"**_ she insisted. He obliged with mounting frustration. "Put me over the bed."  
  
His eyes wandered, slow to visualize, before a devilish smile crept up on his face. A _dirty_ little vixen.  
  
He rolled over, folding the quilt back as he stood up, taking a moment to stretch and flex his sore arm. The squeak of the bed (he'd never, ever been so blessedly thankful for a cheap, squeaky bed) alerted him to turn around, his gaze landing on Rose. Or the half of her he'd never seen up close before.  
  
Her hair was splayed out over one shoulder, her back bony and canvassed with various tattoos. Some were intricate, snaking around her ribs, a mobile of planets hanging from her spine and decorating the delicious space between her shoulder blades. But he swore the lighting was not tricking him and that she really had a little hamburger tattoo on her right shoulder, about the size of a quarter.  
  
He bent over her, pressing a painfully soft kiss to the planet he assumed was Pluto. Or Venus. He didn't know, couldn't care at all. His cock twitched to attention as its length pressed against the flesh of her ass, decimating any and all other matters in his mind.  
  
There was another tattoo on the low of her back -- a paw print. A dog's paw print. When she wriggled herself against him, he refrained from mentioning it. Taking a deep breath, he lined himself up with her, pushing her thighs apart slightly, and drew the head along her dewy slit. A moment later, he sheathed himself in her welcome, wet heat.  
  
His eyes closed, brows raising at the well-known intensity. Slowly he pushed himself in, setting his hands on her hips again, allowing her temporary lead to continue as she brought herself against him, laughing and reveling in the burn.  
  
His arms flexed as he stayed deep inside of her, attempting some restraint to not get it all out right then and there. By the way her arms were shaking as she kept herself upright, he didn't think she'd last long either. When he pulled back, his movements were evidently a little too eager and it slipped out, bobbing uselessly and grossly for a moment.  
  
As she laughed, his hand reached forward and clasped over her mouth. He drew it back in, delirious with sensation as he felt her mouth part open, her tongue brushing over two fingers. A steady pace was set, not deathly slow but not painful for her, and she brought his hand down to drag against her clit.  
  
Her thighs were shaking, head thrown back in a licentious moan.  
  
"Pull my hair," she insisted, her breath hitching.  
  
"Put your knees on the bed," he countered. A heated knot in his stomach ensured he wasn't going to last. His other hand was still toying with her clit, frenetic and stuttering.  
  
He stopped only long enough to allow her to do so. Once her knees were pressed into the bed's edge, indenting the air with the delicious creak of the bed springs again, Arthur continued his rhythm. His left hand traced against the curve of her soft ass, its contact against his pelvis loud enough to get him off if he let himself, before brushing the ribs of her back, her sweet mobile of planets, then finding home on her shoulder, squeezing tight.  
  
When he started grunting as he fucked her, picking up steam and driving into her at a delectably hard speed, she cried out. Per her asking, his right hand knotted through her hair, pulling it enough to continue the noise (he never wanted her to stop), but not enough to hurt her.  
  
 _"Fuck!"_ she exclaimed, beads of sweat forming at her dyed hairline. Her breasts swayed beneath her, vulgar, wholly beautiful. "Keep going, baby --"  
  
 _"Don't call me that,"_ he grunted, gravelly. He sounded possessed. "My name's Arthur."  
  
"Arthur ... _Arthur ..."_  
  
The nice tugging pain from her pulled hair was alleviated, giving her no time to relax as her senses were flooded with the primitive sweet feeling of Arthur's cock dragging against her inner muscle at an absurd, animal speed.  
  
 _Sweetie_ was never this primal. She wasn't sure he knew what primal meant.  
  
His palm against the right side of her face pushed her down into the mattress, craning her head at such an angle to be able to see Arthur. His eyes were closed, mouth curled into a frown, looking entirely concentrated on _feeling._  
  
From what they'd talked about before, she didn't believe he'd ever _felt_ in his life.  
  
 _"Keep doing that,"_ she rasped, feeling his head hitting a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves. _"Show me why you own it."_  
  
"Do I own you?" he gasped, speeding up his movements, tightening on her shoulder to increase the position's hard pressure. His eyebrows knitted together.  
  
 _"Don't stop,"_ she cried, her hair splaying out in front of her, feeling the heat shoot up her spine. His hands went wild, grasping at her body when she stopped looking at him. _"Don't fucking stop."  
_  
 _"Oh, my god."_  
  
Arthur's vision flashed white, his ears ringing with his own strained, pathetic moan as a range of profanity spilled out of Rose's mouth. The bed springs' frantic rhythm struck him like a butcher knife. His hand caressed her ass, her sweet thigh, as he poured himself inside her, toes curling and chest heaving.  
  
Taking some great effort, he pushed himself forward and pressed a soft kiss to the crown of her red head, drawn in by her lemon scent.  
  
Moments later, he pulled out, allowing himself to collapse on his back on the bed, thoroughly exhausted. He needed to get home soon. His eyebrow twitched at the look Rose gave him.  
  
"So that clown makeup does follow you home," she joked, flipping her hair over her right shoulder to look at him.  
  
"Sometimes," he said quietly. He didn't want to think about work. He didn't want to focus on anything outside of the room in which he frequented. "You think it's funny to harass your clients at work?"  
  
"What are you gonna do, fuck me?"  
  
"Maybe next time," he shook his head. "Too tired now."  
  
"I don't think we've ever fucked like that," Rose smiled. "You've been holding out from me."  
  
His eyes looked up at the ceiling, his blinking slow and glowing with a rare need for sleep.  
  
"I didn't know if I existed until today."  
  
Deft fingers intertwined with his own. He allowed them to be brought to her lips, a glossy kiss pressed to the tip of his middle finger.  
  
"I didn't know your name until today," she considered. "I thought you were always gonna be Sweetie to me, you were always so shy."  
  
"I -- I like ..." He cleared his throat. "-- I like you saying my name the way you did."  
  
"Well I liked saying it," she nodded. "I think more people need to hear it."  
  
He believed she was right. He believed, whether it was good or not, people were going to.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur had never gone home hours late with a spring in his step.  
  
Even Auggie mewled in protest against his tardiness, demanding fresh cat food as Arthur heated his mother up a TV dinner. She resisted it, saying she'd been sick until four that evening and was going to ask for Tums to be added to the weekly grocery list.  
  
"I'm sorry, Mom. Something happened today and ... I'll explain tomorrow. I don't want you panicking, but I lost my job and spent all day finding new applications."  
  
He winced inwardly at the lie, but to anybody besides himself, the alternative wasn't better at all.  
  
"Don't work yourself into another fit, Happy," Penny reminded him, her chewing slow and soft to not aid in her nausea from earlier that morning.  
  
"I won't, I promise," he said quietly, pressing a kiss to her head. "But I'll find another job, I promise."  
  
When she started to drift, Arthur strolled to the living room. There was a weight in his chest that, for the first time, he didn't mind being there. He let his eyes close as he sat on the couch, letting himself drift before he had to get up and get a shower in.  
  
It was quiet. He breathed slowly.  
  
His eyes shot open, his head snapping to the door on the left.  
  
On his feet in an instant, he rushed over and wrenched the door open. Bed empty and neat as she'd left it that morning.  
  
"Oh, my god," he whispered, already rushing to grab the keys. A violent, revolting heat coated his ears. "Oh, my god. Fuck!"  
  
He bolted.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The subway systems were down. He'd ran the eight blocks to the Flynn family apartment, his lungs splintered and burning, eyes pouring with shame.  
  
He had never, ever forgotten to pick Carrie up for anything.  
  
A few passersby going in the opposite direction exclaimed in disgust at his pace, one woman flicking a cigarette at him. His heels ached where he stormed up the steps, desperate to keep the number 8 in mind. That was, as far as he remembered, their apartment number. Third floor, apartment eight, third floor, apartment eight ...  
  
 _What was the fucking time anyway?_  
  
"Just a little bit late," Mr. Flynn said as he opened the door. Arthur heaved through his nose, shamefaced as the man's tone had a more biting edge than Arthur thought capable of him. "It's eleven-thirty. Your daughter only went to bed an hour ago."  
  
"Can you get her for me, please?" he begged, his heart hammering. "Oh god, I'm so sorry."  
  
He swiped his hand over his eyes, unable to take the up-and-down look from the harried Mr. Flynn before the man set off.  
  
Arthur blew out a breath, his stomach flipping violently. The physical resisting pain of a breath just had to be pushed through before his brain shut down. Thank god, thank god the man was up at this hour.  
  
Footsteps alerted him to look in. Carrie hung off of the man's shoulder like a limp doll, adoringly small and shrouded in pink.  
  
"I gave her one of Heather's nightgowns," the man whispered, his stoicism not leaving, even as Arthur readily accepted his daughter's arms around him. She buried her little nose in the crook of his neck, unstirred by the scent of sweat and embarrassment. "I'll get it from you the next time she comes over. I'd prefer a closer time next time."  
  
Arthur's eyes, having fluttered close to revel in her softness, opened again to see Mr. Flynn's hands resting on his hips like some sort of irritated schoolmarm.  
  
"I tried calling you at work, and then at home," he said. "I attempted to call her mother, too, but nobody answered."  
  
Typical. He rubbed a cathartic circle on her back as she burrowed into his neck.  
  
"I got tied up at work," he said softly. "I -- I'll talk to you about it in the future. Thank ... thank you for letting her sleep here."  
  
"We wouldn't deny her."  
  
In the harsh, narrow light of the hallway, Arthur saw something in the man's face that wasn't disdain. His eyes softened, though nothing that spoke of virtue or positivity. Carrie's presence had the tendency to subdue a tense mood or, in Joss' case, exacerbate it.  
  
From out of view, a plastic bag was brought forth, held out to him. Securing Carrie in one arm, he took it.  
  
"Her clothes are in the bag, and she lost a tooth. I put it in a plastic baggie. I'll see you later, Arthur."  
  
"Thank you," he said again. _"Thank you."  
_  
He opted for the elevator this time, not trusting himself to not drop her trying to walk up the steps the way he was so confident in his abilities eight years ago. When the _ding!_ of the buttons, less jammy than their own apartment, aroused a sleepy whine out of her, Arthur shushed her soothingly.  
  
The city bus was the only means of transit left that released him from the shame of carrying around a sleeping child in a nightgown. Although the old bus driver gave him a wary glance, the bus was mercifully empty, letting him position Carrie to rock against his chest as he secured her against him.  
  
The subway was down because of him. Because he stood up for himself and three men fucked with the wrong clown. Good. If they were stupid enough to brutally beat a maniacally laughing clown in the city transit of one of the most dangerous places in the country, they deserved to be fucking killed.  
  
His smile faltered.  
  
Carrie breathed in and curled her feet against him. Unconsciously, his arm tightened in his hold on her.  
  
Murder ... self-defense, could carry ... implications.  
  
 _Implications_ could carry ... _Carrie.  
_  
 _Carrie.  
_  
Implications could _take Carrie away from him.  
_  
His mouth went dry, his blinking rapid as he let his gaze linger on the child sleeping against him. The revulsion in his stomach twisted into a knot that pierced right through and could've crushed all the bones in his back.  
  
They couldn't know.  
  
 _They couldn't know.  
_  
 ** _They will not take her from me.  
_**  
The gun remained in his bag of clown clothes in the living room, no longer of use and therefore no longer in need of a wash.  
  
Arthur didn't sleep that night, no matter how close and snuggly and warm Carrie was when he crawled into bed, his shower hot but unfulfilling.


	21. Sad Chicken

Carrie sat on the edge of the coffee table, hair tousled with sleep that looked less heavy than the previous morning. Hyper-vigilance was a Fleck family trait if ever there was one.  
  
Her bottom lip sat fat and crooked in consideration of the $3.50 in her palm. Her eyes opened and closed out of rhythm with each other, looking permanently ground into exhaustion. The weather outside did not suggest a cheerful summer morning, but as though a billow of dust had swept through and stripped the sky of any attainable sweet emotion or color. The rain would have clouded their apartment in near-black if Arthur hadn't turned on the living room light and the TV.  
  
He stared at her with interest, inspecting her dulled reaction. The half-snubbed cigarette between his shaking fingers, only smoked in front of her when he was on his last leg of nerves, was blown out of the side of his mouth away from her vicinity. Behind them, Captain Kangaroo pulsed to orchestral life and beguiled her into his TV home. It was another day of the news being strictly banned in the house.  
  
"How did I get home last night?" she asked, finally picking her head up to look him in the eye, unblinking even in the face of how tenderly he lingered on her face.  
  
His brow twitched.  
  
"... The Tooth Fairy brought you back," he answered, knowing full well she was at the age to know who put money under her pillow and collected her baby teeth. "Also told me you need to brush your molars better because they're worth their weight in gold."  
  
He didn't want them to be gold colored. He wanted them white. The incisor of interest to him was tinged yellow like his own when he pulled it from the plastic baggie. Joss would kill him if he didn't get on her about brushing her teeth.  
  
Carrie stared at him, disbelieving, the money in her hand as out of the realm of childish use as ... as a plate of cucumbers.  
  
As far-reaching from her taste as a Raggedy Ann a nightgown twice her size, its material frilly and licking stripes of itchy red on the base of her neck.  
  
"What time is it?" she asked, surveying a beam of withered lamplight that bounced its way off a quarter and gleamed in her retinas.  
  
"Seven-eighteen," he said, scratchy with barely-sustained sleep. He was never sleeping again. "What woke you up so early, Peanut?"  
  
She drew her thumb along the edge of a dollar bill, its scratch as thunderous inside as the weather was outside.  
  
"Bad dream," she admitted.  
  
"You wanna tell it to me?" he suggested, attempting cheer. She shook her head, her hair swaying in tandem against her. "You know I'm always here to listen."  
  
The parting of her cracked lips, her teeth betraying that dark gap just in front of her right canine, making a display of her budding childishness, also suggested to Arthur that her frustration at being left behind didn't strike that statement as true. He sighed, his shoulders slumping, feeling heavy as sand bags. The cold shoulder was not so easily detachable from her person when she woke up in a mood.  
  
"Carrie ..." Weak muscle stretched and tensed beneath the gentle press of his thumbs on her biceps, his cigarette abandoned in the tacky heart-shaped ashtray. His fingers wrapped easily around her arms, putting her attention, for better or worse, on him. "... I just wanna look at you."  
  
He'd committed her face to memory, its traumatic delicacy having imprinted on his brain the first time he held her, threatening himself bodily harm if he dropped her. Every year he doubted she could get any sweeter and every year proved him wrong. The greedy part of him took note of every detail that was his traits, but put to good use.  
  
 _ **No one's going to take you from me.**_  
  
"Are you having another Done Day?" she asked.  
  
"No, I'm fine," he answered, afraid to even whisper. The curve of his brows tugged a pained smile into his lips. He'd break with the pressure it took to produce it further. "Just ... you're my favorite person; did you know that?"  
  
He hoped to god she knew. His home didn't pine for anyone else's presence so strongly in her absence.  
  
"Okay, Daddy, I know."  
  
Her eyes traveled to the stroking of his thumbs across her shoulders as though they were roaches crawling upon on her being. She spoke with the same inflections whenever he told a particularly groan-worthy joke, but he was aware that she knew he was desperate for an appraising laugh.  
  
Seven in the morning and running on an empty belly was apparently too early for such a display of sappiness.  
  
"Can I get a bath before the hot water stops?" she asked quietly, still eyeing his thumbs. They retreated from her arms.  
  
"Of course, Peanut," he smiled, tugging the painful cord of exertion in his throat like a tight piano string. "D'you want me to wash your hair?"  
  
"No," she said. "I can do it."  
  
"Are you sure?" he asked. "I don't mind --"  
  
 _"I can do it."_  
  
Her aggression startled him enough to sit up, a lump in his throat as though she'd punched him in the adam's apple. It went unmentioned. The need for atonement for the previous night's transgression clung hot and heavy over the tense conversation.  
  
He nodded.  
  
"O -- Okay, I'll draw you a bath," he said, feigning pleasantry and understanding. "I'm gonna make Nana some french toast. Do you want me to save you some?"  
  
There was no question that he would anyway, but he learned long ago that giving his child a _choice_ rather than a _command_ when she was in a certain mood alleviated some tension. In temper, Carrie was her mother's daughter.  
  
"Will you have time to make breakfast before work?" she asked. "I thought you said you had to go in early today."  
  
He bit the tip of his tongue, his eyes not wavering. He acted as though he wasn't trembling from the chest.  
  
"... Hoyt gave me the rest of the week off," he said, forcing an inhale of stuffy, nicotine-drenched breath into his lungs. "So I get to spend the whole week with my best girl. We ... we can watch a movie if you want."  
  
 _("I don't wanna see your fuckin' face until Saturday. Come in, pack up your shit, and get out of my shop or I'm throwing it all in the trash.")_  
  
Carrie nodded slowly, less enthusiasm flitting across her face than he would've appreciated. She looked instead like she'd gotten a thorough grilling about a bad school grade.  
  
The money dropped on the ground, the spinning quarters ominous in their low but thunderous hum. In moments, she took refuge in the bedroom, door slamming with a gust that chilled Arthur more than it should've. The house was left to an eerie emptiness that rivaled the dizzying, nauseating emptiness in his stomach.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The serene temperature of the bath Arthur had procured for Carrie while she gathered her clothes was evidently wasted and eradicated when he intruded only momentarily to grab her nightgown for the wash.  
  
The bath was practically steaming, tainting the mirror in a dense fog that stung his throat. It tinged his skin with quiet but uncomfortable dampness that clung to his hairline. In the middle of it, Carrie sat with her knees hiked up to her chest, her hair fading into the color of her skin in the room's dying light, startled to see him standing there.  
  
"What, are you boiling lobsters in here?" he asked, joking by way of deflecting frustration. "There's only so much money I can throw at a water bill, Carrie."  
  
Lacking a vocal response, her eyes darted around as Arthur testily stuck his fingers in the water, wincing as its prickling in the pads of his skin.  
  
 _"Jesus,_ Carrie," he exclaimed, bringing his hand back up. The assault of chilled air on his hand was a relief, and he looked at her in question, her eyes wide and face sheet-white. "C'mon, out. You're gonna burn yourself."  
  
Statue-like, Carrie stayed in her curled position, only furrowing her brows. There was a snarl in her curled lip that had not been there moments earlier. Sighing, he moved to pull her up by her arms, and grabbed a towel once she was standing. A sparing glance confirmed to him that her legs, besides her bare knees, were pink from the ridiculous heat.  
  
"Your mom's gonna kill me if you burn yourself," he muttered pulling the towel around her form. The hot water scalded him up to the middle of his forearm as he took out the drain. He turned to her, sighing and cleaning his arm. A sopping mess of bath water pooled under her tinged feet. "Have you been sitting in hot water for twenty minutes?"  
  
"... S -- Sorry," she said quietly, lashes prominent as she flitted her eyes closed. Arthur could've vibrated from the power of his remorse. It gave him no respite as he stared at her hunched figure, pitiful and terrifyingly close to his own when he was put in a meek submission play. Something in his chest pulsed with the urge to be passive and loving and beg her forgiveness. For what exactly, he wasn't sure.  
  
"Did you wash your hair?" he asked, refusing to dignify her apology with an acceptance. She didn't need to be sorry for anything. "Alright, I'll let you get dressed. Just lay down, Peanut. Please?"  
  
A near _'I love you'_ almost escaped from him. He evaded the obvious phrase as he left her standing in the bathroom, shivering and frighteningly small.  
  
\- - - -  
  
A cigarette danced restlessly in the space between Arthur's thinned lips. _Technically_ smoking wasn't allowed near the washer and dryer units due to the child tenants getting complaints at school for their clothes smelling like nicotine. _More_ technically, Arthur couldn't give a fuck.  
  
Sitting on a milk crate, he rummaged through the contents of an old cardboard box, a side of it hasily scribbled **C. FLECK - 8J** in fat, dried Sharpie. One bottom corner was gnawed by what he could only assume was the super rat one of the neighbor's kids claimed to have seen pillaging the basement.  
  
In the beheamoth of broken plastic toys and scribbled picture books, there was the sewn baby blanket from Joss' mother, Marien. Beneath the smell of musk and vermin, hidden in the fuzzy stripes of the baby tigers, Arthur could still smell it. That sweet baby smell that left him burrowed in the hazy area between grounded reality and a far-gone past.  
  
There was, locked in his memory, the hospital-provided talcum scent clinging to his fingers that he just couldn't stop himself from inhaling whenever he passed the newborn along to her grandfather -- the first person to have the honor to hold her outside of her parents and doctors. A kicking, giggling infant wrapped in bundles of towels and a fresh diaper after a thorough tub-draining bath, shrieking as her parents smothered her sweet belly in silly kisses.  
  
Arthur smiled crookedly into the material, forgetting his original purpose for pulling the box out. It smelled like home. It smelled like a family of three.  
  
"Interrupting something?"  
  
The material slipped through his fingers, pierced on a red plastic edge of a Tonka truck. Sophie sauntered past him, her fuzzy pajama bottoms grazing the floor as she held a laundry basket on the opposite hip. Placing herself on a crate near the storage shelves, Sophie pulled a book from her pile. Quietly, she quipped, "One washer and dryer in every room of the basement for ninety-two units, and our landlords still can't fix the damn elevator."  
  
A brow quirked in acknowledgement, exhaustion carving into the gentle smile he was able to procure. His slacks remained docile, tired and overly-satisfied from the events of the previous evening.  
  
His hand delved into the box again, a haggard breath pushing away the memory of wrestling with rage. Carrie was just upstairs, taking a nap. Her cold shoulder was steeped in his hours-late pickup. She did not know any of the events that enabled or preceded it nor did she need to.  
  
The exhilaration of his reality was overshadowed with a soul-bending glimpse into his reality _without her._  
  
A _week_ without her was bad enough.  
  
"Do you ... do you ever miss the baby phase?" he attempted, pulling out a pack of old kindergarten photos with some interest. "When they couldn't give you attitude?"  
  
"Hah! No," Sophie snorted, looking up from her book to challenge his surprised frown. "Sometimes I think I do, because Gigi was so chubby and cuddly when she was a baby, and I adored giving her bottles. Then I remember when she was a year old and sneezed in my open mouth."  
  
Arthur exhaled forcefully, a derisive laugh not as painful as some others. Shared between parents, it was all but an in-joke. Nobody ever let him in on in-jokes. More often than not, he could discern that _he_ was the root of them among his workmates.  
  
"I'll take her attitude any day," Sophie continued. "At least she gets it from me so I can know what my mom went through."  
  
"Carrie ... she's had that attitude since the beginning," Arthur mused, lost in the unwelcome remembrance of spotting bruises on Joss' swelled belly, deeply alive but unenviable and painful to look at. "When she was a baby, I would give her her baths ... she would pee on me when I got her out 'cause she learned I would put her back in the tub and bathe her again."  
  
The first time he'd laughed of his own volition in possibly days, shared with Sophie. His heart hammered. Getting peed on by a baby was the least of Carrie's transgressions against her parents, but among the funniest.  
  
Solidarity sheened on Sophie's tired smile. It was only 8:15 AM. The metallic roar of the washing machine deprived them of any sleep, no matter how uneasy or rear-numbing from the milk crates.  
  
"Is Carrie giving you lip?" Sophie questioned, good nature clear and ever-present in her tone.  
  
"She's giving me _nothing,"_ he answered, his eyes rolling to bloodshot whites. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "She's ... quiet this morning. I don -- I don't like it."  
  
"Oh, my god, let's switch kids," Sophie suggested. Arthur stared curiously. "Gigi's figured out how to work the record player."  
  
He nodded, his heart instantly wincing in sympathy. There were only so many rounds of Tiny Tim that Carrie could run the record player through before it ran its course and slapped her purple with a broken vinyl.  
  
"She probably just needs to get some energy out. Second week of summer and she's stuck inside," she considered, bringing her attention back to her age-weathered book. Arthur nodded lamely. "Why don't we take the girls to the park?"  
  
Why? Aside from Arthur's soul-gripping fear of the police tackling him to the ground and forcefully taking his daughter away, _**that's just how his luck ran,**_ and running the possibility of not seeing her again unless through bulletproof glass once every few months? His stomach churned violently, molten lava ready to burn right through and release his innards. That would've been more pleasant.  
  
"We could do a day in the park," he spilled out, the reactionary part of his brain ravenous for dominance over the logical.  
  
"You won't skip out on me this time? Does Friday sound good?"  
  
No. Not at all. No day sounded good. _Let me barricade my door and stay inside forever with my baby, knock knock, nobody's home_  
  
"Friday at two should work," he said.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The offering of french toast did not impede Carrie's pursuit of sleep well into the morning. She merely looked at it, flicked her brows, and turned over on the couch, burrowing her face into the pillows and caving in on herself. Arthur watched her ... _felt_ her retreat into a ball when he kissed the crown of her head, then gave up.  
  
Not even her aged Eeyore plushie from the box in the basement coaxed her out of her shell. Arthur careened past her, at a total loss, when he brought the TV tray into his mother's room.  
  
"Momma -- late breakfast," he alerted, nudging her shoulder with feather-light gentility. "We can't all be lazy bones today."  
  
He helped pull he into a sitting position, resting her gently against the headboard. Setting the tray over her person, aided by Bob Barker on television spinning the Price is Right wheel in crowd-luring anticipation, Arthur cut into the french toast, not letting it show that he was aggravated at the waste of two slices of bread that his stubborn daughter wouldn't eat.  
  
"Avoid Carrie if you can today," he advised. "She's in a weird mood."  
  
"Carrie ..." He placed the fork in her hand, letting himself all but sink into the chair beside her -- the first rest in hours. "She should be in school, Happy. Isn't it Tuesday?"  
  
"It's also summer, Mom."  
  
"It doesn't look like summer," she responded, peering at the ashy light dripping in through the curtains.  
  
Arthur nodded, his mind drifting. It did not look like summer at all.  
  
He wondered if the guy was still laying on the steps of the subway. If today's downpour was sweeping his cold body into a nearby sewer grate, washing him away with the stink of other garbage and whatever alcohol he'd had on his person.  
  
He wondered if the blood was still there, a ribbon of warning to other delusional punks who believed they could bully and boast their way through Gotham.  
  
In spite of himself, in spite of his gut twisting every time Carrie was brought into the same realm of thought, Arthur laughed.  
  
"I think it looks great outside," he commented. A hum of disapproval beamed through his ear.  
  
"I wrote a new letter for Thomas Wayne." The tickle of amusement teasing his bones diminished, crushing his smile. Not this again. "He could help us with money."  
  
"Mom ..." he attempted, staying docile. "... why would he help us?"  
  
"He's a great man, Happy. He would recognize me."  
  
He nodded, too tired for an argument. Thomas Wayne may have been a _great_ man, in the eyes of the media, but Arthur didn't see what really qualified him to be a _good_ man.  
  
What would Thomas Wayne have to say about those darling rich boys?  
  
\- - - -  
  
The plate of french toast left on the coffee table remained untouched, growing cold and attracting the attention of a fly as Carrie's attention was permanently etched on the TV, her frame huddled into a ball that radiated discomfort.  
  
She had not moved in six hours.  
  
Carrie was a force field of toxicity if the mood struck her. Arthur sat by her feet, journaling, throwing wary glances at the near-whites of her stilled eyes. Her nose peeked out from the green blanket, giving him respite in her essence when he went to sleep later that night.  
  
 _ **Every parent complains when their kid talks too much.**_  
 _ **Missing her loud voice today.**_  
  
"Peanut, you'll be eating cold, soggy bread and syrup for dinner if you don't start talking," he started, a cigarette bouncing wildly between his lips.  
  
She blinked in response. Delayed, but it was something. On the television, Dumbo was being cradled in his mother's trunk, aching for her comfort.  
  
Puffing his chest out, at a loss for alternatives, Arthur put his cigarette down and testily leaned over to wrap his hands around her blanket-shrouded shoulders. She tensed under his grip but didn't resist when he pulled her into an upright position. The blanket draped lewdly over her pajamas.  
  
Her eyes stayed glued on the screen, so Arthur manually brought her attention to him with his palms against her face. A pinky finger caressed the lobe of her right ear. The material warmth of her squishy cheeks conflated with the scratchy, electric warmth of his previously balled hands.  
  
It terrified him to near-muteness that he saw so little in her eyes that they struck him as a thunderstorm rather than a unique blue.  
  
"Carrie Frances ..."  
  
She craned her head when he pulled her into him, her chin sitting against his breastpocket, angling her awkwardly so that he had to drag her lower half closer to him. His hand didn't stray from her upper thigh, but patted it tenderly, his other hand stony on her left shoulder. She balled her fists into the blanket wrapped around her form.  
  
Baby Mine may have made Arthur tear up a few times when Carrie was an infant, but now it was a downright assault of his senses.  
  
"Please don't be mad at me," he said quietly, looking down at her faceless gaze. Her eyes fluttered closed, her lashes obscene.  
  
"We're going to the park with Sophie and Gigi on Friday ... and I'm taking you to the toy store on Thursday."  
  
Nothing.  
  
"I don't want you to be mad at me."  
  
Sometimes he couldn't give her a choice.  
  
"Are you mad because I left you at Heather's house?" he questioned, governing the mounting hurt in his tone, putting on a facade of sweetness when his hand finally moved from her thigh to her face. "Carrie, when have I _ever_ forgotten to pick you up for anything before last night?"  
  
An inward hiss was accompanied by the faltering bite of her bottom lip. Arthur knew her too well. She was hesitating on her next move.  
  
He did not anticipate it to be her burrowing into his shirt, a muffle of a high sob, squeaking and devastating, breathed into his heart.  
  
"Carrie ..."  
  
Did he call Joss? Was that the proper protocol? Was this attributed to her early onset of hormones? What the hell happened that made her so wound up about being left at a friend's house for a few extra hours?  
  
"Did you ... did you have another bad dream?" he asked, tucking his chin into her hair. It wasn't sweet. It smelled as tar-like as the accursed shampoo felt.  
  
Miraculously, a nod.  
  
"Why don't you tell me about it?" he offered.  
  
 _"Cause."_ The strained muffle in her voice receded when she came up for air, sucking her lip in a watery-eyed sob. "You ... you _forgot_ me in the dream w -- while I was being eaten by a big _monster."_  
  
"... Hmm ..."  
  
He nodded, deliberating. In the litany of times Joss had forgotten or couldn't be inconvenienced to pick Carrie up from an after-school club or her short-lived soccer practices, Arthur was typically called upon to collect her instead. More than once, he'd had to hop from bus station to bus station, still in his clown makeup, throwing some half-sorry mutterings to Hoyt about needing the rest of the day off. To hell with work or whatever Hoyt found to bitch him out for; he'd run through a blazing forest if need be.  
  
The swell of the triumphant orchestra on the VHS was obscene and happy, juxtaposed to the sight in the living room, the father murmuring _"I'm not forgetting you"_ into his daughter's hair.  
  
Whether he liked it or not, Carrie was unforgettable.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Okay, I got one. What do you call a paleontologist who sleeps all day?"  
  
Carrie quirked her brows up in mock-suspense, her chin perched on her knuckles. Seven in the evening had seen a lull in her dreadful mood, and she was able to sneak in a few bites of a jello cup before declaring a full stomach.  
  
They sat cross-legged on the couch, the only barriers between them being her waning attitude and the incessant thundering outside their window.  
  
 _"Lazy bones,"_ he concluded, breaking her face into a half-smile. "Okay, you try one."  
  
Her head tilted up, eyes roaming but rightfully restored to crystal blue.  
  
"Why did the lion spit out the circus clown?"  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Cause it tasted _funny."_  
  
He smiled at her, a brow shooting up in challenge. Her smile was full, proper; it was all her mother.  
  
"Where do blue eggs come from?" he asked.  
  
"Where?"  
  
"Sad chickens."  
  
Hand bared into a claw, Arthur nearly shot it out at his daughter with wanton recklessness. Remembering her earlier resistance, he reigned his arm halfway at her and stilled.  
  
"Can I snuggle you?" he asked, a flush of relief chilling his face three degrees when he saw her nod.  
  
The journal rested on the ground, crumpled and forgotten, as he pulled Carrie to his form and roved his fingertips across her belly and sides. She fell against him as her nerves betrayed her. Delighted laughter, alive and pulsing with emotion, rounded into every corner of the dreary apartment as Arthur growled _"Are you a sad chicken?"_ ad nauseam and tickled her mercilessly. Squirming and ushering away his hands, she breathed life into him when she laughed.  
  
Fighting him off, she spun in his direction, jokingly proclaiming, "I'm the blue egg, so _you're_ the sad chicken!"  
  
His forced laughter kindled down to its burning wick, a sobering smile settled comfortably in the corners of his mouth.  
  
"Why am I the sad chicken?"  
  
"Cause you're ..." She caught her misstep, mouth suddenly thinned. The lashes assaulted the bottoms of her eyelids. "... you're sad all the time."  
  
His brows flicked in acknowledgement, not ready to concede that she was _right,_ but she also wasn't _wrong._ A crimson flared into his cheeks as a lip snagged between his teeth.  
  
"I'm only a sad chicken when you're not here to make me tear my hair out," he deflected.  
  
"Well, what if I just stay here, always?" she considered, high in mirth as she stretched across his folded knee, an imitation of the cat splayed out on Nana's chair just a few feet away. "I could start doing chores and taking care of Auggie."  
  
"That's not how it works, Peanut." He wished it did. Holy hell, he wished it was that simple. His hand stroked her bangs back, baring her forehead. "Your mom takes care of you and she loves you."  
  
Her lips curled down into a deft grimace, as if to challenge this statement. An entire ocean of stilled water sloshed lethargically in her eyes.  
  
"But we're going to the toy store on Thursday," he reassured, already running through calculations of the appropriate money to spend. It was hers by right and he already had the rent paid for the month, but the electric bill was going to be costly. He had $335 to his name to sort out the bills. _Fuck._  
  
"Pinky promise?"  
  
His gruff appendage wrapped delicately around hers, enveloping it without intention. A wriggling of pink curled around his tan finger. Such was their symmetry.  
  
"Pinky promise."


	22. Park

"You heard about that shit down at Bedford Station?"  
  
Arthur nodded tightly, the lump in his throat ebbing away with the pour of burnt black coffee into his system. He hadn't been able to think about much of anything else _but_ Bedford.  
  
"Mm-hmm," he said after a moment. "Two, three bodies?"  
  
"Three bodies," Sophie affirmed, taking a sip of her own lighter, sweeter drink. A beam of light seeping through the thick maple leaves juxtaposed with the shriek of wind that blew her hair in his vicinity and necessitated jackets for the foursome. The smell of her hair was involuntary to him and indistinguishable, but he wanted it to linger.  
  
"Terrible," he responded.  
  
Reservation tightened Arthur's lips, laser-focusing in on the playground thirty feet from their forms on the dewy, paint-chipped benches. Foregoing warmth, Carrie's denim jacket lay across his lap, a rainbow shoulder patch covering his thigh. Her wild grin vanished and resurfaced between jungle gym support beams and a tube slide, her legs interlocking around Gigi for a tight and protective hold as they flew down together, being chased by other children.  
  
"Now I can't take the subway to work. Gotta run the cab fare up," Sophie said again, reigning in her hair with a frazzled hand and an apologetic smile that indented her dimples. Arthur spared her a half-glance and took in a deep breath -- too chilled on his lungs from the burning coffee and too stale for Gotham's garbage-scented summer.  
  
"I could walk you to work," he said, assuring her of his non-seriousness with a half-smile, the lines of his mouth as dark and deep as a shark's gills. "Too many creeps out there, you know?"  
  
"How much you wanna bet those three ..." The wind blew sharp in his ear, licking his cheek with its sting. _"... assholes_ were planning on following a girl home?"  
  
His head turned, his gaze lingering on the thumping and crushing of mulch under four little shoes as Gigi sprinted after Carrie's giggling form. A spring of surprise plucked and bobbed in his throat.  
  
"What you -- what ..." he stumbled. "... you think they deserved it?"  
  
Her brows rose, a wry smile curling into her lips, daintier than the one seconds earlier.  
  
"I think half the _city_ thinks they deserved it," she argued. "You seen the graffiti up on Maja Road?"  
  
"No."  
  
"It says _'clown is the true king'."_  
  
A laugh shot out of his throat, high in pitch, unambiguous in its truth. They were a safe distance away from the other clusters of parents that the sound went unnoticed, safe in the bubble of their park bench. The barrier of Styrofoam shielded the pads of Arthur's fingers from a full-on burn from the coffee he sloshed around in his cup.  
  
"It all just makes me wanna ..." The intake of rain-raged air was sharp in his nostrils, irritating his vocals. "... keep Carrie inside 'til she turns eighteen. She doesn't need to be around all this chaos."  
  
Said chaos seemed to not deter the girl from wedging her way into the abandoned rocket climber, twisting her hand around a ring of rust to hoist herself higher into the needle-point roof. Arthur's throat tightened.  
  
"I know what you mean," Sophie said, stealing his attention. "Now I gotta get better at locking my doors and keep a bat near the couch so some rando doesn't try to rob us."  
  
"Try a padlock," he suggested, forcing down half of the hot coffee. "Or a deadbolt lock _with_ a padlock."  
  
"Well aren't you an expert," she teased. Her breath hitched as they watched Gigi plummet from the swings, giving chase to Carrie once again up the steps of the neglected play fort, riddled with kids.  
  
"I was a locksmith when I married her mother," Arthur explained.  
  
The cacophony of the park -- the cackling children, the shrieking, rusted swing sets, the traffic fifty feet behind them scattered with profanity and blaring car horns -- fell to ease on Arthur's ears. It wasn't a great day. His anxiety still flared, the coffee was still burnt, it was still unusually chilled for the middle of June.  
  
Sophie shifted on the bench, unwittingly nudging her elbow into the meat of his arm, giving him friction through the fabric of their jackets.  
  
"Carrie seems fine today," Sophie noted. Arthur nodded, not wishing to dwell on Tuesday.  
  
"Just hormones, I think," he brushed off, unsure of the taste it left in his mouth. More bitter than black coffee. It stained his teeth with its discomfort. "You know how girls are."  
  
"Doesn't it make you glad her mom's around to deal with that stuff?"  
  
"... She's good for some things," he considered, hiding a shudder of remembrance at the last load of laundry including a few training bras that he was not warned of. "I think she's starting to enjoy being a mom."  
  
It just took eight years. Arthur tucked a wild strip of curled hair behind his ear, leaving it defenseless and cold but not as unkempt.  
  
"It freaks some people out, having a baby." Sophie twirled the empty cup in her hand, imprinting a nail into the Styrofoam rim as the pads of her fingers squeaked at the resistant contact. "Gigi's dad left three days after I told him. Like _literally,_ hopped a bus and left town. Last I heard from him, he's living with a new girl in Hazeltown."  
  
Arthur nodded slowly, a strike of indignation swelling his heart. From what very little he'd gathered from Penny, his father was aware of his existence, and fled after some indecipherable, unimportant amount of time shortly after he was born. He didn't understand it. He never wanted to.  
  
Carrie emerged from the green tube slide again, staining her pants with mulch that sprayed and dusted the air as she took off running and giggling again. A sharp tug of nostalgia intermixed with the child before him made him exhale a laugh through his nose. Too many 5 AM bottle feedings and diaper changes had been initiated for him to just _leave_ her, no matter if it would've been the best thing for her. He'd cried too hard and too much outside the delivery room for him to _think_ about leaving them.  
  
She stopped to take a hefty breath, and then waved at them from atop the play fort, and returned to her running.  
  
"Oh, you're fucking _kidding_ me."  
  
Arthur froze. Sophie's exclamation dragged his attention to the point of contention that her acrylic finger was pointing at, already on her feet. He sighed, a fire of irritation in his lungs as he brought himself to his feet with her.  
  
"That's that bitch who's been creeping on the girls in our apartment," Sophie affirmed, undeterred in their brisk pace despite her kitten heels.  
  
A pair of red canvas sneakers and frilly yellow socks peering out of the tube slide alerted Arthur to quicken his strides, a flare of something red in his mind as Mr. Wilkes took a half-step towards her and the small cluster of children within his vicinity.  
  
His hand wrapped around Carrie's bare, sweaty arm, pulling her up without her even noticing him. She let out a shriek of surprise, a high whine of _"Daddy!"_ caught in his ear as he passed her over to Sophie. One hand each was latched to both Carrie and Gigi.  
  
Arthur turned from their security in Sophie's grip to the affronted man to his left. Carrie's denim jacket was bunched in his fist. The other children had dispersed to their respective parents. A dribble of iron stained the back of Arthur's teeth as he hit the tip of his tongue.  
  
 ** _Walk away, walk away, don't say anything --_**  
  
"I wasn't gonna do anything to them, I was just asking them how their summer was going!" Mr. Wilkes exclaimed, hands flying up in protest. Sneering, Arthur felt his werewolf hacking and shrieking in his chest.  
  
"Don't _talk_ to my _kid,"_ he trembled, surprised at his own articulation with a shot of adrenaline quaking his hands. The peaceful acidic lake in his stomach misaligned and slinked its way up into his throat, bile and stinging rage flaring his face to a cherry color. "You have _nothing_ to say to her."  
  
"Arthur, let's _go,"_ Sophie pressed, five feet away but as distant and distorted as the moon. He looked at her and the two goggle-eyed girls behind her.  
  
J _ust walk away, don't get yourself arrested, she doesn't need that, don't break his jaw right now, walk away, don't say anything, walk away --_  
  
He did.  
  
 _"Daddy --"_ Carrie wriggled her fingers in his hold on her hand, her fingertips stained pink as he pulled. His grip loosened only slightly. "You said we were staying at the park 'til dinner."  
  
"You got toys to play with at home, Carrie, don't complain."  
  
She could be subdued with her dolls and a can of Pepsi. Arthur's hand shook even as he covered her own in his grasp, but he ignored it. Just as he ignored the stabs of splintered mulch and bloody scrape of her palm roughly streaked against his own. A tense glance exchanged with the lighter-looking Sophie alleviated his nerves about having to cook for the evening.  
  
 _Next time he talks to my child is the last day he's fucking breathing  
_  
 ** _I have a gun at home and a reason to use it.  
_**  
\- - - -  
  
"I have a question -- here, hand me Scotty's arm. The left one."  
  
Obligingly, Carrie picked the favored piece of the scrap pile of plastic limbs littering their small table. Chewing on a small bowl of fruit snacks settled in the corner, she watched her father take a small carving knife to the softened vinyl hindrance, leaving a delicately-crafted ring of plastic to bob and roll along a few centimeters of the table's center.  
  
When they got home, Sophie had ordered two pizzas for the five residents in 8J, and regaled them with three hours of The Jeffersons before she and Gigi went back to their apartment. By 8 PM, Carrie was freshly clean from a bath, less egregious than the days earlier, assembling a vinyl model with her father. The world shut them out and she was thankful.  
  
Curiously, she wrapped the vinyl plastic ring around her thumb, fascinated by its perfect fit. She coughed at the cigarette smoke tickling her lungs, swatting the billow away, alerting her father to put his cigarette down. The table lamp shrouded their hands in a sickly yellow film.  
  
"Sorry. Let me ask you," he tried again, a billow of smoke trailed into wall to his left. "When we were at the toy store yesterday, why'd you ask what you'd need to do to have me buy the toys for you?"  
  
"Mmm ..." she hummed, a coating of pizza oil sticking her tongue to the roof of her mouth. "I don't know."  
  
"You don't know?" Daddy parroted. "Does your mom make you do chores to be able to get things?"  
  
"Sometimes."  
  
"Does she ..." He seemed to falter, focusing in on a daub of glue to attach the engineer's plastic limb to the discolored torso. "... does she make you, say, fold the laundry with her to let you play in the backyard?"  
  
"Mm, no -- Keith does the laundry, 'cause Mom's belly is getting too big to carry the laundry basket up and down the stairs."  
  
He nodded, his lips thinning in a way she recognized as not wholly up for the idea.  
  
"Does she ever not let you have food if you don't do your chores?"  
  
His voice kept a disguise of curiosity that Carrie was able to see through. It didn't match the physical tensing of his body at all. Her mother carried the same tone when she was getting annoyed with her father or Keith, or Carrie herself.  
  
"No," she said. "But she makes me help her make dinner sometimes, or unload the dishwasher. She told me not to tell you that I can climb on the cabinets to put the bowls away, but I do it here anyway."  
  
He matched her half-smirk, throwing her a glance that suggested her secret stayed close to the chest. The cigarette perched in the ashtray warned of eruption with its fringes of smoke climbing their way into the lamp light. She watched it blaze and dance, a ballet of vice that her father told her to never get involved with.  
  
"Well, your momma's got a lot on her plate right now," Arthur conceded. "It's a nice thing to help out around the house. I'm don't think it's easy feeling so heavy all the time."  
  
He wasn't guessing about it -- he _knew_ it wasn't. Chief of Joss' complaints that relegated her dreams of three kids to a one-and-only family were the form-fitting outfits that ripped at the seams like popped sutures; the warring brain that tried to heed the doctor's advice of salads and nothing but salads, while yearning for cherry frosting by the carton. Old pencil-pushing male doctors admonishing her water weight with the wave of a hand -- _Mrs. Fleck, you're in for a nightmare if you keep eating and stressing; **you're simply too fat.**_ The crushing humiliation of Arthur having to help her tie her shoes when she could no longer stretch and bend at will without the cost of her oversensitive bladder, bruised by her unborn daughter's head.  
  
"D'you think Mom's gonna like the giraffe poster we got for the nursery?" Carrie questioned, doubling her arms to watch his intricate work. Chair legs groaned against the wooden floor, warning her against such ministrations when the old women living under them knocked against the floor. She rolled her eyes.  
  
"Well, you know your mom and giraffes," he considered. "I think she would've asked for a baby giraffe for our wedding present if we had the space for it."  
  
This made her laugh.  
  
"I read a book in the school library last year," Carrie began. Engineer Scott's legs were attached firmly to the small vinyl platform with a generous smear of safety glue. "It said that giraffes, when they're born -- some of them are six feet! That's taller than you!"  
  
He nodded, a puff of warm laughter glistening the crackled, dark corners of his mouth as he smiled.  
  
"I am short, aren't I?" he asked.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Not short enough to not toss you over my shoulder and run away, though."  
  
Carrie rubbed the pads of her thumb and forefinger together, interested in the smooth friction of the adhesive drying and scaling her skin.  
  
"If you stop smoking cigarettes, I think you can grow a lot more, Daddy," Carrie proclaimed, pointing at the vice in question, wasting away down to the tanned nub. "Did you know that people who smoke are, like, ten centimeters shorter than people who don't smoke?"  
  
"Two centimeters," he corrected. "And the cigarettes make me feel less nervous all the time, Peanut. You know how you run around and sneak chocolates before bed behind my and your mom's back, like a little monkey?"  
  
Her smile displayed no remorse for such deceit.  
  
"It's like how chocolate make me feel?" she asked.  
  
"Like how chocolate makes you feel," he confirmed. "But stick to chocolate. No cigarettes, ever. I don't want you to be stinky like nicotine, like I am."  
  
Engineer Scott's arm was nearly ripped from its socket when the phone rang, rattling wildly on its hook. It overpowered the fluorescent buzz of the TV on the other side of the living room. Carrie looked up when her dad didn't move, surprised to see him stock still. The expanse of breath, sharp and greedy in its want, protruded his rib-cage against his pale skin.  
  
"Peanut, go to your room for a few minutes, okay?"  
  
"But _Daddy --"  
_  
 _"Carrie Frances."_  
  
With an _"Ugh"_ of indignation, Carrie scooted her chair against the ground, competing with the unruly phone for the more piercing sound. Stings of wet hair whipped out of place as she turned and marched to her room, as unknowingly ominous to her father as a dribble of blood from a bullet lodged in her thigh.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The stretch of time for Arthur to get to the phone and put the receiver to his ear felt as distanced as twenty minutes.  
  
His consciousness stayed rooted to the rickety seat, his hand soaked in table lamp and safety model glue. Arthur could see the jarring outline of his back and the sunkenness of his stomach, his pajama pants clinging to his hips. A fat glob of a pink tongue flicked out, getting caught in the corner of his lips, hung open and gaping like an ugly trout.  
  
Arthur held the receiver to his ear, its hard plastic like another scarring punch. His attention darted between the bedroom door to the left of the couch, and the hallway right in front of it, as though expecting robbers to hurl from them. The gun was still in his clown bag, under the table side, out of view of over-adventurous little girls.  
  
His fingers curled around the phone receiver, his grip red and furious to stop his shaking that threatened an explosion of laughter on the precipice.  
  
"... Hello?"  
  
 _"Arthur?"_ Joss asked.  
  
Relief flushed through his body. He nearly sighed into the phone, never so happy to hear his ex-wife. He didn't realize he had been sweating until the clammy chill of the night's stifled air slapped him into feeling.  
  
"Yeah, it's ... hi," he fumbled.  
  
 _"Arthur, are you free tomorrow? I -- we need to talk."  
_  
The palpitations of his heart prominently jutted his chest in a jackhammer staccato, though it receded to a threatening flutter. His brow perched up.  
  
"I ... Joss, we said we weren't gonna meet anywhere for a while. For the sake of not confusing her."  
  
 _"This last time, okay? I really, really need to speak to you."  
_  
The fluttery, almost airy feeling distended into a buzzing, ominous hum of chilled water in the low of his gut. He held the phone gentler but with more protection, a chewed nail nudging his cheek.  
  
"What is this about, Joss? Are ... are you okay? Is the baby okay?"  
  
 _"Baby and I are fine."  
_  
The speed of her tone, her rising pitch, did not suggest as much. Nerves in Arthur's stomach pinched at his skin like shards of glass breaking their way free from the inside.  
  
"Well I -- where did you have in mind? Carrie's been having a lot of ordered-in food this week, I don't want her to --"  
  
 _"Can you find a sitter for Carrie? If at all possible. This needs to be a me and you talk."  
_  
"Jocelyn, what is going on?" he asked, pressing his voice. Dr. Kane mentioned something about assertiveness but without aggression when approaching conflict with his ex-wife.  
  
 _"Arthur, I'm fine. Everything is fine, okay? I'm ... maybe I'm just hormonal, who knows?"  
_  
He shook his head, as though there was anybody around to agree with his negative sentiment.  
  
"Joss, I know what you're like when you're pregnant. Your tone isn't hormonal to me, it's paranoid. I _have_ paranoia. I take medication for it."  
  
He bit the tip of his tongue, sore still from hours earlier. A sucker punch of laughter caught in his throat like a billiard ball.  
  
Well ... he _had_ medication for it. An aptly-timed letter in the mail from Gothamcare yesterday evening informed him that social services had gotten their funding pulled, and he would have to pay out of pocket for his and his mother's medication if he wanted it to continue.  
  
He could only afford medication for one of them. Even then, he wasn't sure how long it would last until he was able to find another job. He'd have to cut the dosages in half in his mother's breakfast.  
  
The cigarette was all the way on the other side of the room. It minutely receded down to the snub every time he looked away.  
  
 _"What about Carnegie Deli tomorrow?"  
_  
His heart seized, lips curling into a disgruntled sneer.  
  
"Joss, that's a sacred place for us. Whatever this is about, can we do it somewhere else? You can't even eat deli meat right now, I thought."  
  
 _"I'm ... Arthur, I'm really craving their meatball parm, okay? I am stressed as shit, let me have this."  
_  
He smirked, entirely unconscious to it, the hurt in his stomach loosening. There was a time where none was more beautiful than the messy, snort-giggled young woman whose adoring pudge of belly seemingly was in desperation for a glass of hot tomato sauce on their fourth anniversary.  
  
"Um ..." His brain seared, attempting to war away the emotional side. "... can you take me by my work tomorrow? I -- I, um ..."  
  
He took a deep breath, inclining the receiver an inch or so from his ear.  
  
"I got fired a few days ago."  
  
He held in a wincing breath.  
  
There was silence.  
  
Silence as unnerving as if the holes in the receiver were all the barrel end of forty small guns.  
  
 _"I'm ... sorry about that. We can talk about it tomorrow, alright?"  
_  
His brow dragged up, eyes narrowing at nothing in particular -- the curled corner of the nicotine-stained green rug? A golden strip pooled from under Carrie's bedroom door. Based on the squeaky mattress springs, she was jumping on the bed _(the second time this week, damn it),_ impatient for a story.  
  
His mind veered back to the cool alto hum through the phone. It wasn't in Joss' nature to apologize unless ... unless she wanted something.  
  
"Will Keith be there?" he found himself asking, unsure of his instinctive agreement to another day out with her.  
  
 _"No. He won't be there."  
_  
There was a tightness in her voice that brought a permeating unease to his chest. It dissipated as the information settled. One good day together and a modicum of trust with his child's welfare didn't negate the fact that he wished to keep their interactions at the bare minimum level.  
  
 _"Should I pick you up around three, maybe four tomorrow?"  
_  
"Uh ..." His hand found his neck, dry adhesive on his fingers scratching against the tight, warm skin of his jugular. "... yeah, that should be fine. I just need to find a sitter for Carrie. Mom's not been feeling great the past few days."  
  
 _"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."  
_  
How many times had be believed he would relish hearing a rare Jocelyn Soucie apology or display of genuine sympathy? Why now did it make him feel filmy and itchy?  
  
"Yeah," he agreed, the distraction of Carrie in her room shielding the unease in his voice. "I gotta go, Joss."  
  
 _"Good night, Arthur."  
_  
"... Night."  
  
The receiver clicked on its hinges, and Arthur stood. A nagging voice in his brain urged him forward to put Carrie to bed and get through the fiftieth reading of Harold and the Purple Crayon, then bag the slices of pizza Sophie had left for them, and then lay aimlessly until something akin to sleep forced his eyelids to an anvil-weight somewhere in the pink hours of the morning.  
  
He stood still, a _"Hmm"_ of consideration soothing the billiard-sized suffocation in his throat.  
  
Joss' tone, though less irritating than what he was accustomed to, stuffed the question into the front of his brain of if it would've been any more nerve-wracking if the police had been the ones to call instead.


	23. Carnegie

_Seltzer laughter scratched at his ear drums: itching with life and syrupy sweet. He's never had that before.  
_  
 _Arthur was braced into his seat, ventilated heat licking stripes of invitation and corn syrup scent down his neck and into the crevices of his shirt. He'd debated wearing a gold tie and silently thanked the stars that he stopped himself short of remembering how. Jocelyn may have backcombed her hair like some Bridget Bardot (the lone pin-up curl in the front that threaded itself loose in her theatric fervent movements bobbed against her forehead and it was ... so, so pretty), but her attire when she unsheathed the canary cardigan told him she had not expected the formality he inadvertently thrust upon them with his ashy-grey button-up.  
_  
 _John, Paul, George, and Ringo stared at him in cotton print, their head shapes slightly distorted along her sheet-white torso. His eyes averted, screaming red at the dramatic impropriety, and he pretended not to notice a bra strap of white elastic peeking out from her shoulder -- a white whip to reign his disgusting primitiveness in its place. In twenty years, the only bras he'd ever handled manually were his mother's during laundry delivery.  
_  
 _A neglected daub of salt in the corner caught his attention. Jocelyn continued to laugh with their young waiter and his cleaner flattop streaks ... **he** didn't smell like dollar store cologne. He smelled like good money and sharp aftershave.  
_  
 _The clicking of sticky laminated menus alerted Arthur to look up. He did, sluggishly. Joss sighed and rested her tangled arms on the small square table, sweetness in her cheekbones.  
_  
 _"You didn't order anything," she noticed. His attempt at a smile was visible for a half-second.  
_  
 _"I got water," he countered, matching her relaxed posture. Woven grey fabric choked his elbows so tightly, he could almost **hear** the seams threatening him with tearing. For all his frailty, Arthur was deceptively sinewy. The creaking sound, only permissible to his ears, tore through Elvis Presley's blue suede shoes in the kitchen behind them. The music periodically distorted their lilting conversation when the door would swing open with new, hot food, a gunshot of hustle and bustle jolting Arthur slightly as the door was nearly knocked off its hinges several times.  
_  
 _"Water is **free,"** she laughed, teeth big and white and glamorous. "You can get **water** at the pier across the street. I mean real food."  
_  
 _The water at Corps Pier was polluted. A putrid mesh of green algae, cigarette butts, dead fish, and blackened remnants of Arthur's face, more often than not swelled and discolored with bruises. Blackened with memories of wanting to jump in and keep himself there until he turned blue and went belly-up with the fishes. None of them would get a funeral, or a spared thought for mourning.  
_  
 _The moon and Jocelyn Soucie's laughing company barricaded him from such an act tonight. It was more looking and less contemplating.  
_  
 _"I save my money for my mother," he confessed, proud enough of this fact to release himself of a sheepish grin directed at the table. Above him, a fluorescent light took a peculiar shape in the table's glossy coating -- as glossy as her beautiful pink lips, **I wouldn't dare but please tell me it's okay to touch your lips** \-- scattered and obscured by his stray forehead curls.  
_  
 _"Aw, that's sweet," she said. Arthur's eyes looked up, although his head did not. The upturn of her lips, the lopsided crinkling of the bottoms of her eyes as her cheekbones swelled suggested an endearment to her reception that other people -- high school girls, the football team, the gym coach who sighed **again** because Fleck couldn't afford a new outfit **again** \-- did not have to spare for him.  
_  
 _Arthur straightened his elbows to feel a little more comfortable. He didn't know if her presence or the smell of warmth and sandwiches settled his stomach.  
_  
 _"I'm sorry we had to move this up a week without much notice," she said. Six days, to be more exact. Arthur tried not to count -- he'd heard something about that being impolite. "You know how Christmas is with the family coming in and I gotta entertain the cousins and all that ... they're taking us all to some lights celebration that I grew out of when I was twelve. Gonna be a drag like always."  
_  
 _He didn't know. Pushing an eyebrow down to shield his folded upper eyelid, he nodded anyway.  
_  
 _"It's okay," he said quietly. "I like -- I just like being here. With you."  
_  
 _Was that too forward? She didn't look offended. **Please, fucking please, don't laugh --**  
_  
 _"So what are you doing for Christmas?" she asked, highly amiable among the clacking of ice cubes in a Styrofoam cup. Sticky blots of mascara marred her face when she fluttered her lashes in interest. He was too stunned by her interest in him -- why him? -- to point it out.  
_  
 _"Uhm ... mass with my mom," he remembered. "Then she might make a walnut pie, or ... something."  
_  
 _For the first time, upon a hefty swig of acidic cola, Jocelyn's mouth caved into something sour.  
_  
 _"That's it?" she questioned. "No presents, no family? What a mystery, Mr. Fleck."  
_  
 _"We don't really ... do holidays in my family. My mom is my family and that's about it as far as I know."  
_  
 _"Mm -- you would not get along with my family," she laughed, shoulders shaking. "My parents both got promotions for their jobs at the same time when I was seven, so we go all out for our holidays. Invite all the family over, get a new pine tree every year, buy out a bunch of Christmas lights ... I could bake you some cookies!"  
_  
 _"You don't have to."  
_  
 _However sweet they'd potentially be, they ran the risk of being binned by Penny should she find out a girl made them for Arthur without being paid for her service. What kind of poison would they contain to harm her precious boy? Everybody was so mean to him.  
_  
 _"What do your parents do?" he asked, desperate to divert. The last time he'd had a Christmas cookie was Mrs. Woodley making them for his second grade class, gluey in their sugary decoration. He was twenty now. "My mom's a d -- domestic servant."  
_  
 _Domestic servant, house cleaner, motel maid ... same difference. All respectable.  
_  
 _"Oh, my parents' jobs are so **boring,** Arthur!" she exclaimed, leaning into his vicinity for emphasis, a smack of spearmint hitting his nose. His eyes froze on the table.   
_  
_"My dad is a ... windmill technician? Whatever the phrase is, he fixes wind turbines in the more rural areas of Gotham, out where the pastures and farms are, so he has to drive two hours out to work and two hours back," she explained. "And my mother is a full-time bank manager and a part-time bitch."  
_  
 _Arthur choked, thankful for his lack of water at the moment, lest Lady Fortune allow his drink to spill from his nose. The heat that spread to his forehead was not one of comfort, but electric surprise. He blinked at her rapidly.  
_  
 _"I mean, don't get me wrong, I love my mom," she clarified. "But she's always on my case about getting a job while I'm already taking four classes and paid my way through the semester before I quit at Holly's Bar, y'know? I don't need every Tom, Dick, and Harry playing footsie with me while I'm trying to serve drinks and they shove money down my bra."  
_  
 _"My work is hiring," he said quickly, the speed and confidence automatic. The image was seared into his brain before he could refuse its existence -- nobody needed their hands on her **breasts** ... or her feet. No footsies. "It's um ... a -- a pharmacy. If that -- if --"  
_  
 _"If it'll get my mom off my back, I'll take it," she insisted. A whiff of corned beef from the kitchen, diverting their table, riled a lonely growl from Arthur's stomach. "I'm thinking about pursuing psychology. The human brain fascinates me. What about you?"  
_  
 _"Um ... I'm going just to go," he admitted, smiling. There was none more fascinating than his own brain.  
_  
 _"Are you liking it so far? You're taking, what did you say? Mandatory Philosophy and Religion, and Oral Communications?"  
_  
 _He nodded, his bottom lip snatched between his teeth, stained with the little food contents he'd scrounged that morning from the kitchen. Not for the first time that night, he wished it wasn't his lip, but hers.  
_  
 _This girl was ... so ... so ...  
_  
 _ **Pretty.**  
_  
 _"I think I'm liking it okay."  
_  
\- - - -  
  
"Mom, what's this?"  
  
"That's a car seat, baby."  
  
"Oh."  
  
Arthur turned in the passenger seat, straining his neck. The object of Carrie's attention was fastened in the cracked leather of the back seat, strapped in with an awkwardly-folded buckle. It looked more like a plastic wash basin with a cushion than a baby's car seat. He had to will himself not to wonder if it was just a more modern design, or the expense of a heavy pay day; the one they'd acquired from his in-laws was a 40s model, not to be put to use until Carrie was eight months old.  
  
"Are we gonna bring the baby home in this when she -- when it's born?"  
  
"Mm-hmm," Joss hummed. Arthur shifted back in his seat, quirking a brow at her lack of fervor. Sun beams roved on the edges of her sunglasses, as though rolling her eyes for his view. Her lips, though pink and cute, were smudging the fuzz of her bottom lip as she crinkled them. If he didn't know her so well, he would name her Tense.  
  
"You might have to be the one to carry the baby out of the hospital, Peanut," he egged on, crossing his arms. He inched his head so the car's visor could do a semi-sufficient job of keeping the beading rays out of his eyes. "Your momma's gonna be sore and Keith's gotta drive. You think you're strong enough to lift your brother or sister to the car?"  
  
"Well ... it depends," she concluded, childishness heightening every syllable. Arthur's seat was pushed forward where Carrie's bouncing knee jutted against it. "What if the baby is fifty pounds?"  
  
A nervous, high laugh that challenged her high pitch pistoned out of his throat, joined with Joss' breathy laugh.  
  
"Carrie, sweetie, the baby's not gonna weigh fifty pounds," Joss said. Arthur knew it was as much reassurance for herself as for their tasked daughter. "He's fifteen ounces right now -- not even a pound heavy. Almost as big as a grapefruit."  
  
In the rear-view, he saw her nod. She was slouched down in the middle seat, the back of her shirt riding up, red leather staining her skin with the window's glare.  
  
"Is just its head the size of a grapefruit?" she asked suddenly, prompting Joss' pencil brows to curve upward, sticking out from the shield of her glasses.  
  
"It'd better _not_ be," she commented, prompting a hidden smirk that Arthur cast to his shoes. _"Yours_ was, but it doesn't mean this one will be."  
  
"Well how much did I weigh when I was being born?"  
  
"Mm ..." Joss' lip curled down in consideration, the admonishing of not remembering turning her mouth into a strip of thin strawberry taffy. "I think nine ...?"  
  
"Seven pounds," Arthur clarified, the fact automatic. "Ten ounces."  
  
The heat that emanated from behind Joss' sunglasses, giving him a once-over told him only one thing: _show off._ Arthur stared at his lap bashfully, not intending to be a smart ass.  
  
"I was in too much pain to remember anyway," she rectified, fingers splaying against the rigid wheel, the crunch of leather cutting through the whir of Gotham's smoggy air seeping into the cracked windshield. Scattered to the wind, Arthur heard through cinched, girlish lips, a muttering of, "This god damn city."  
  
"Mom, did you like the giraffe poster?" Carrie sprung up. It strained with a want to diffuse the tension that clung to Arthur's skin like a grind of dirt.  
  
"Oh yeah, honey, I loved it," Joss said, her mirth at a cross with the downturn of her lips. With a sigh that jutted the oblong mound of her stomach, smoothing out the swampy green rumple of her shirt, she shot quickfire glances to the rear-view mirror and the road. "I'm gonna frame it, and hang it above the toy box in the nursery. How's that sound?"  
  
"Daddy picked it out, after we went to the toy store," Carrie pointed out.  
  
Joss gave him another once-over, although she kept it closer to herself this time -- less a nod and more direct eye-contact that Arthur could gauge, her blue eyes visible but obscured slightly behind the indigo granny glasses.  
  
"Well ... good job, Daddy," she said, returning her eyes to the road. Arthur could have choked. "Hey Carrie, baby, how's your stomach feeling?"  
  
"All good."  
  
"Didn't get sick at Daddy's house?" she questioned. Arthur's head turned, interest piqued. Carrie was now fully slumped in her seat, her apricot belly exposed to the suffocating air of the car.  
  
"Wh -- what happened?" he stammered, throwing his gaze to Joss.  
  
"After you left on Saturday, Carrie got a bit of upset stomach. Y'know that twenty-four-hour flu? We think she had. Oh god, it was horrible. Woke up at midnight to her puking on the stairs."  
  
"And why wasn't I told about this?"  
  
His voice shot up in pitch, not interested in inclusion of the event but heeding his importance in the role. Joss' face tinged pink, top teeth showing, white as pearls.  
  
"Because whenever I _call_ you to ask you what to do when she's sick, you _bitch_ at me that you're busy."  
  
 _"Please_ stop, I do not _bitch_ at you," he countered, offense as clear as water. He really tried not to swear in front of their daughter if he could help it, but he had to relent when tension ran high. "I just ... sometimes you need to do things you don't want to do, on your _own._ You're a _mom."_  
  
"Then _why_ are you on my _case?_ I _took care_ of it!"  
  
"Guys, stop _arguing_ \-- you _always argue!"_ Carrie exclaimed, drawing the silence forth with the shrapnel crack of her voice.  
  
A modicum of embarrassment brought Arthur's head back, his attention shifting from her alerted posture to the deep frown etched into her pink lips, to her harried gaze, bouncing like a pinball between him and her mother.  
  
Exhaling through his nose, Arthur brought his hand back to meet hers, scratched fingertips grounding him in the present against her soft digits.  
  
"We're not arguing, okay, Peanut?" he attempted, quiet, flitting his gaze to Joss to plead for damage control. "No more arguing."  
  
It took several seconds, as Arthur returned to staring out the window at the repeating patterns of the chipped sidewalks and mail shots crushing between the weight of garbage bags, but Joss' voice sprang out, a modicum more jovial, "You were probably sick, baby, from all those donuts you ate when Daddy came to see us on Saturday."  
  
In the rear-view, Carrie's brows flickered in vague acknowledgement. Arthur saw the exhaustion in her sloping eyelids.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Arthur missed the days when Motown and Elvis Presley's rockabilly reigned supreme over the restaurant's speaker systems. Even if he wasn't particularly keen on them at the time -- even if they were decades past their prime.  
  
They had breakfast here, the day before their wedding in '68, and Arthur had caved his chest in so tightly with nerves that the crushed limb pervaded his ear drums with blood and air. An hour earlier, his chicken-scratch coincided with Joss' inky, girlish loops to legally bind her as _Mrs. Jocelyn Lynette Fleck._  
  
Joss said it was a sign of good things to come that Sly and the Family Stone were encouraging them to _dance to the music_ as soon as they walked into the restaurant. Since he heard nothing over his own symphonic heartbeat, he took her word for it.  
  
The music charts of '81 did not catch his fancy the way they did his young, impressionable daughter and _'with the times'_ ex. When they walked into the little deli, the dinging overhead bell ran parallel in sweet nostalgia to the bombastic crooning about some Jessie's girl he'd heard three times a week since February.  
  
The laminated menu at the front had just been wiped down with disinfectant. Arthur skimmed it with his thumb as Joss fumbled through her purse. He was surprised to retract his hand back to find it wet. Every restaurant he'd been into (which admittedly, wasn't an impressive number when he couldn't acquire the accompaniment of an eight-year-old) since the garbage strike began had gone to the greatest extents to keep their health up to code or face a shutdown.  
  
"Two waters, please. A meatball parmesean sub."  
  
Joss slid $7 to the young, gangly teenager behind the counter, ratty-haired and glistening with too much toner. The uniforms had certainly shifted with the times in Arthur's near-sixteen years of consumerism in the restaurant. Baby blue 60s skirts for striped zip-up navy dresses in the 70s for black polos and khakis.  
  
This city was consuming any and all life and throwing them in overstuffed garbage bags, sunny yellows on the old menu board splotched like the rotten banana peels splayed out on the sidewalk. Arthur took a deep breath.  
  
"I assume you're not getting anything, as always?"  
  
He caught Joss' gaze, not irritated, but thick with expectation and smudged mascara. Fumbling, the menu caught his attention once more, bolded red **A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA** shining with fluorescence above them. The light emitted sounds that suggested death -- the bulbs on their last leg, assaulted by the many dead flies residing inside.  
  
"Potato salad," he decided. Joss' eyes drilled into the side of his down-turned head. In his peripheral, she fumbled for her wallet.  
  
"Arthur is ordering food for _himself_ for once?" she questioned, breathy and teasing. "It's a miracle."  
  
His eyes rolled upward and he turned to sit down at a two-person table, not humored by the ribbing. In nearly twelve years together, restaurant dates were few and far between, even when it became a requisite to their splintering hold on their marriage to send their toddler to her grandparents every other Friday. Movie dates and meticulously planned home dinners and comedy clubs offered food that Arthur, in his wound-up frugalness, relegated to a single plate for just his wife, more often than not. A cocktail of anxiety meds and adoring sex satiated a need for food.  
  
Stuffing her wallet back in her purse, a sweet giggle left for the young cashier in lieu of a real tip, Joss turned back to Arthur. She sat to his right, in the seat nearer to the door, splashed with delinquent spit and bird droppings.  
  
Arthur kept his gaze on the opposite wall of famous patrons to the restaurant. He didn't need to focus on the fact that her ass was getting bigger, too. Two see-through cups of water were set on the table.  
  
He bit the tip of his tongue, his fingers thrumming aimlessly and without rhythm against the red tile of the table. A gelled brown curl snagged against his neck, grounding him too hard and viscerally into reality.  
  
"Since when do you ever eat? Not even on our wedding day."  
  
He turned his head, affronted with amusement.  
  
"That's what happens when you have anxiety and you're on two medications. Imagine what _seven_ would do," he refuted. "And I had half a piece of wedding cake, if you remember."  
  
She nodded, and he felt a little stupid for assuming she could forget, even if she wanted to. Wasn't it what all girls dreamed of from the age of semi-coherence? White dresses and cake and music and _"I do"_ and wedding nights that went unspoken of except in the vaults of their shared memories?  
  
He blushed down to his neck in remembrance.  
  
He had to only hope she didn't hate him enough to lock it out of her mind. For all the talk there was of the bride, it was, until two became three, the most integral day of his life that he filed under the label of _being normal._  
  
"My meds got cut off," he admitted, remembering her first point. His lids closed over his eyes, feeling heavy and embarrassed.  
  
"What -- _all of them?"_  
  
He nodded, not bothering to open his eyes to gauge her reaction.  
  
"What _happened?"_ she balked. The same tone with which his young, harried wife once noticed sweltering bruises in the midst of a kiss to his bare shoulder blade. They were fresh parents, he a fresh clown. He was in pain but he was in love.  
  
"Budget cuts," he answered plainly. "Got my meds through social services. A letter came in the mail -- cuts across the board. Now I don't have therapy on Tuesdays."  
  
"Well where's your medication coming from?"  
  
She sipped her water, her head shaking in disapproval before the answer even got out. Her brows knitted together. He wasn't sure what answer she was expecting.  
  
The tile was cold, but warmed under the tips of his fingers. He focused his eyes on it, searing his vision with ruby sheens.  
  
"I don't _have_ medication coming in, Joss," he explained. "I can't pay for all of it out of pocket and my mom needs _her_ pills more than I do. All I can do is spread it out to make it last."  
  
"But ... you also have a child to be thinking about here, as well as your mother," she said, spreading molasses through her words to let them catch him one by one. "What's gonna happen to you off your meds? I told you a long time ago, Art -- putting _yourself_ first sometimes would also put your daughter first. I know how much you're into that sort of thing."  
  
He scoffed derisively. One of them had to be _into it._  
  
"I don't know, Joss, I'll ... figure something out," he sighed, as confident as his exhaustion could procure him to be. "I'll look into it when I find another job to pay for my meds."  
  
"Well, what about your therapy? Are you still getting that?"  
  
He shook his head, irritation scaling his skin at the disgruntled sigh she left him with.  
  
"Didn't help me anyway," he said passively. "The same questions, week in, week out. _'How's your job? Is your daughter being provided for? Are you having any negative thoughts?'"_  
  
He may as well have not gotten therapy at all, but he figured the agency of somebody to confide in that was provided for him after he left the hospital would have the same fulfilling effects in the midst of his divorce. Wishful thinking? All Dr. Kane had gotten out of him in four years, in spit-flying bursts of discordant cackling, was his fear that he would lose custody of his daughter due to his mental illnesses, and how apparently over a decade together can mean very little to some people.  
  
"Well ... are you having negative thoughts?" Joss questioned.  
  
He met her with a shrug. "Depends on the week."  
  
Depends on the day. On the hour. On the mounting anxiety, _who's calling now, please please don't be the police, please please oh please, you wouldn't arrest me with a babe in arms, would you --  
_  
The echoed scrape of chair legs groaning against the floor rattled him to look at Joss. She was standing, a hand alternately on the table and her stomach, and began to walk, the mark of **DONNE** on a black and white placard leading her down the hall to the bathrooms.  
  
Even with a hundred other shinier, more zealous, famous faces to look at scattered on the walls (John Lennon seemed to be the newest addition, and Arthur stared at it far longer than what he wanted), there was none more pulse-pounding than the one in his memory ... the 19-year-old beautiful blonde who smiled at him in a way he never thought anybody could. In a way that didn't completely deplete him or strike an ice chill of fear in his stomach.  
  
She used to smile at him in ways that drowned out the sound of the bay across the street. It had been years since its sirens drew him any further than touching his reflection with a distressed drip of silent isolation.  
  
Only she could sear him with the pain that she knew how to ease. This deli held a lot more to him than dry turkey burgers and ice water.  
  
The teenage cashier breezed past the barrier of the counter and set a crinkly plastic bag on the table. Her thick brown pigtail whipped through the air, cutting through Arthur's confusion with a _whoosh._  
  
The bag crumpled and strangled the silence of the near-empty delicatessen when he brought his finger to it. He stopped touching it. John Lennon was singing about his woman through the speakers, spearing a lump in Arthur's throat that was scratchy and suffocating to get down.  
  
Joss came back, her heels as clipping as bullets, her face tinged pink. It bulbed her cute nose a furious reindeer red.  
  
"Alright, we can go," she decided, not waiting for his answer as she grabbed the bag of food. Fumbling, he followed, wary of the force of the door, lest the overhead bell shriek with mercy as Joss attempted to swing it off its hinges.  
  
"What was wrong with eating in?" he questioned, catching up with her pace. Her car was a block down, at the mercy of the parking meter and the heaps of trash bags that threatened to consume it.   
  
"... I can't listen to any more John Lennon," she said hurriedly. They careened through the crowd walking against their current, and Arthur -- not for the first time -- staved off an urge to grab her hand and pull her behind him. A common occurrence, second nature to him when her stomach was carrying precious cargo.  
  
"Makes me too friggin' sad," she continued, pausing against the hood of the car to take in a deep, shuddering breath and reach for her keys. "I was throwing up in the bathroom and crying because I felt sick being fucking five months, and then I heard his voice and cried some more."  
  
He winced internally, his mouth forming a taut line of staunch disapproval. Their last meetup at the deli -- December 18 dates and anniversaries had become co-parent meetings and catch-ups and he hated it, _he hated it so much_ \-- intent on just discussing their child and the pass-off on Christmas and who she would go to for New Years, was marred with news of a cold murder ten days prior. Unable to help himself, he laughed and cried for a week straight, dehydrating himself from singed tears. The Nowhere Man LP a young woman had once bought him for their first Christmas together wore out its welcome in apartment 8J.  
  
"Don't know why they have to play all that depressing shit all the time," Joss grumbled, pushing herself up to veer around for the driver's side door. "Makes me even more nauseous."  
  
"It's ..." He paused, his mind flashing with the remembrance of two cups of water on the table, abandoned. He got in the car anyway, stuffy as it was, rife with the counter-intuitive sensations of garbage juice and a pine-shaped linen air freshener, months past its prime.  
  
"It's nice music," he tried again. "We can't not ever listen to it."  
  
"Well ..." The car veered to life, shooting vibrations through the weak soles of Arthur's shoes. He tried not to nudge the bag in the floorboard. "... that little girl working the counter also gave me a weird look, too."  
  
"Weird, how?" he asked, refraining from an eye roll that stung him to keep down.  
  
"Wouldn't stop staring at my stomach," she clarified. "I'm not _that_ big yet."  
  
"Joss ..." he faltered, regretting not grabbing their waters when they abruptly left. "... some people can't help but stare at a ... y'know."  
  
An unconscious, manicured hand drummed against the pale stretch of skin before settling on a gentle but hasty rub.  
  
"Probably just staring at your ugly shirt," he said again.  
  
It was, he supposed, a tropical leaf pattern, with a bunched knot at the apex of her belly, exposing the Cassiopeia constellation birth mark on her right rib cage. The shirt just happened to be the color of moss and pickles. Not the most appealing shades of green on the senses.  
  
He eyed her up and down. The distend of her belly was only eye-catching if one really paid attention.  
  
"You look like a crocodile," he joked, turning back to staring out the cracked windshield, at the rows and rows of ugly brick buildings and disgruntled patrons. He couldn't distinguish the self-sufficient from the homeless half the time.  
  
"I _feel_ like a friggin' crocodile," she sneered lightly. "Feel like I'm a thousand pounds right now."  
  
 _You look great_ got lost in his throat. Divorce -- it stole his knack for giving compliments; it stole away the one person who gave compliments that forced his good fortune to seep under his skin and make him _feel._  
  
"You're not that big, Joss, calm down," he settled. The car veered into a vaguely familiar gas station parking lot. Some paces away, a homeless man was perched against the chipped white bricks, head slouched, displaying a cardboard sign, crumpled and bled black from the rain earlier in the week.  
  
 ** _HOMELESS VET FROM 'NAM, NEED FOOD AND WORK.  
_**  
Arthur looked away. It was easier to. Painful, but easier. They were everywhere and he nor anybody else could lift them away from it.  
  
"Well ..." An arm inching for his knee, diverting for the bag of food, made him nearly snap his legs together. He inclined them to the right so she could bring the bag up for herself. "... gaining over fifty pounds with your daughter didn't help my body image."  
  
"I'm ... sorry."  
  
He'd said it a hundred times before, and looked set to atone for the rest of his life for the unassumed infraction to her health.  
  
"They said a woman's supposed to get bigger with her second baby," Joss noted, placing a white plastic fork and his little container of potato salad on the compartment that set a barrier between them. "I'd rather die."  
  
The dill flavor was strong ... overpowering. He mulled it over slowly, not wishing to upset his taste buds. Whether it was instinct or just his luck, his sight found her belly again. It didn't shy away.  
  
"So why did you decide to ... y'know -- keep it?" he asked lightly. "We thought ... I -- we said after Carrie that we didn't want --"  
  
"Because," she cut in, smiling tightly down at the cheese-swamped sub sandwich in her lap. "Our great city of Gotham, wanting to ... I guess preserve the sanctity of the unborn, cut off abortion services at seven weeks ... I was seven weeks and _four days_ when I found out."  
  
A stinging tint of discomfort slowed down Arthur's eating. He felt it in his cheekbones, in his neck. His eyes were forced away from her stomach, to the furious clamping of her jaw as she ate.  
  
"The first time putting myself first is putting my daughter first ... and I'm too fuckin late," she sighed. Lashes assailed her cheeks furiously as she blinked in rapid succession, and Arthur was startled into silence to see red webbings etch their way to her retinas. "She and I were just starting to spend so much time together after ... after Mark left, the fuckin' asshole."  
  
Arthur nodded slowly, unsure if words were appropriate. A wading memory seeped into his mind of a brawny, steel-eyed man, only a few inches taller than himself. Supposedly a gentle giant with Arthur's five-year-old daughter, though his presence in her life to begin with left him constantly on edge and itchy just under his skin. Nice enough. An orthodontist with a decent pay grade. Bought Carrie a doll house for Christmas. Weaned Joss away from the recreational nose powder when they attended elite parties together. All around seemed like a decent guy that Arthur was somewhat trusting with his daughter.  
  
There was just the bit on the side that he was having sex with his twenty-four-year-old dental assistant for the entire eleven months he was with Joss. Asshole indeed.  
  
Arthur felt his brows upturn in sympathy -- as close as he could get for her. There were no outright tears. She looked dead focused on stress eating the meatballs into oblivion.  
  
"Well ... I'll make the best of it," she concluded, the scrape of her nails against her belly less fervent and more soft-looking. "I, uh ... the little bugger's growing on me anyway."  
  
"Am I ... can --" He sighed, high and strenuous from his chest. The rules of divorce were finicky and he despised the invisible wall they set up between him and her. "... Am I allowed to say something nice to you?"  
  
A chuckling voice, searing into his brain.  
  
 _ **Don't ignore him -- he's being nice to you --  
**_  
 _ **BANG!  
**_  
He took in a deep, dill-coated breath and sat further up in his seat, feeling constrained by the buckle secured around his chest. Straight jackets and a window fractured with wire. **OBSERVATION ROOM  
**  
"Are you even _listening?"_  
  
He blinked, feeling that the languid blinking of his eyes, one by one, looked like some sort of ugly, bug-eyed reptile.  
  
 _"Arthur!"  
_  
 _"What?"_  
  
"God's sake, please try to hold a conversation that _you_ start," Joss grumbled, shifting in the little space allotted. "Yes, it's okay to pay compliments to each other. We're divorced with a kid -- we're not mortal enemies."  
  
His head lowered, a mesh of egg and potato crushed in his throat as his chin tucked into his chest.  
  
"... I forgot what I was gonna say ..."  
  
She snorted softly, her head nodding, her hair buoyant and wisping softly, a direct collocation to the puffy-lipped scowl of derision. A hand, trembling slightly to his tight-jawed worry, shielded her eyes from him, her thumb caressing the curved bone of her jaw.  
  
"Regarding what I wanted to talk to you about ..." There was emphasis on the T's of her phrases. So many arguments had, Arthur had long since come to recognize certain inflections that punctuated different moods. She was wracking her brain. "... I need Carrie to stay with you for next week."  
  
He went still. Waiting for more, his eyes roved.  
  
"Next ... next week is my week with her anyway," he clarified, his tongue lead-heavy with obvious explanation.  
  
"No, I mean 'next week' as in ... as in tomorrow." Backtracking, realizing her error of miscommunication, she added, "My next week. Tomorrow is Sunday. I need -- I need Carrie to go to someone else tomorrow."  
  
Arthur looked at her after some indiscernible seconds, his processing sluggish. Joss looked down and poked at an untouched meatball, possibly bracing for a reaction to her request. A pigeon flew past the windshield, a dime a dozen in this city, but neither Arthur nor Joss stirred at its abrupt intrusion.  
  
"Tomorrow?" he questioned. "I, Joss -- I ... no, I can't."  
  
"Why?" she shot back, finally finding his gaze, red clawing at blue with irritant. "It's not like you have a job or anything."  
  
His eyes closed again, the shrapnel of the cheap shot not hitting him directly but grazing his nerves.  
  
"Please don't argue," he said quietly. "Please."  
  
"I'm not _arguing,_ Arthur, I'm stating a _fact."_  
  
"Joss ... I _just_ lost my job. I need the week away to put in applications and talk to people, I can't be dragging her around the city. I have limited sitters for her," he stressed, struggling to compress the high strain of his vocals. "Why can't you look after her, or why can't your parents do it? I'm sure they'd _love_ to babysit. Friends?"  
  
The last statement was an outlier if he ever knew one. He and Joss did not have friends. The ones she had in college scattered like frenzied mice once she'd claimed allegiance to Arthur, and his strange, kooky laugh that put them all off. There were all of three bridesmaids at their wedding, one of whom was a cousin who just happened to be in town for a college tour. Arthur was apologetic to her for the longest time over the sparse guests outside of their families.  
  
"My mom broke her leg. Apparently Dad is having memory problems," she clarified. A meatball was stabbed mercilessly with the four small prongs, driving a split right down the middle. "I can't trust them with my kid if they can't look after her."  
  
"Well ... why not you?" he asked again, softer still. An involuntary heat teemed in his face. The car was hot and it was fucking summer.  
  
He didn't mention it. She already looked irritated enough, showing in the creases of her down-turned, pouting lips. They parted, a sliver of prominent white buck teeth displayed, as her eyes trained on the steering wheel. When she blinked, slow, her brows rose.  
  
"... Thomas Wayne has a charity dinner he's hosting on Thursday for families that might be interested in plugging some money into Gotham's Finest. Y'know, that program that coaches and supports low-income students so they can get into community college?"  
  
His jaw tightened, but he nodded anyway in consideration. The charity had been around in his youth, but apparently the combined income of him and Penny deemed him _not poor enough_ for the financial help. He had to drain a year's worth of savings for two semesters, and started a year later than his more well-off 'peers.'  
  
"I'm helping Martha Wayne make some food for the event, because I'm invited."  
  
A myriad of counter-intuitive questions running through Arthur's head phrased the whole statement as an oxymoron. His brows rose at her, framed in disbelief.  
  
 _"Martha Wayne_ is making food?" he asked skeptically. "Don't the Waynes have like a hundred people in their kitchen staff? Since when do you know how to cook more than steaks and boxed rice?"  
  
"Since I had a waist line to look after as well as a four-year-old kid to feed," she said. "Don't forget you were only a house-husband for six months."  
  
He hesitated.  
  
"Was I at least okay at it?"  
  
Something close to a smile brushed past her lips. It was there until he focused in on it.  
  
Joss could only smile for so long around him.  
  
"Wait, you don't work for the Waynes." Arthur's eyes narrowed, his brows knitting together in scrutiny. "You sell _life insurance."_  
  
"But I am a high class figure," she refuted. "And I ... y'know, have kids. So I'm invited."  
  
"Is ... Keith going?" he asked. Deliberating on his next question, given her over-familiar hormonal moods -- "Is he doing anything to help? Y'know, you don't need to be lifting a whole lot of weight."  
  
"He and I are ... I don't know."  
  
"Are you two fighting? Is _that_ why you want me to keep Carrie?" he questioned, wincing and gritting his teeth as an especially thick hard-boiled yolk was crushed between his molars. A little more humored, he added, "Did _he_ cheat on you?"  
  
Her eyes trained on the dash board. Arthur noticed the imprint of something her cheek: a tongue crushed between her teeth.  
  
"... I'm, um ... not -- not really sure how to answer that."  
  
Arthur's brow shot up, a furious heat licking at the collar of his neck.   
  
"What -- what do you _mean_ you're not sure?" he asked, a tightening coil sponging his vocals.  
  
"I'm ..." Her eyelids lowered, espousing a look of tiredness that was so alien, so unbecoming of her. The food lay forgotten and uneasy in their laps.  
  
"Do I need to go have a talk with him?" he asked. A punch of laughter stayed lodged in his sternum, stinging the bone as he kept it deep down at the mercy of his tightened words.  
  
"No, Arthur, you don't," Joss insisted, lifting a hand of resistance for some reign over the conversation.  
  
"Jocelyn, my _daughter_ hangs around this guy," he cringed, eyes wide, manic. "I'll talk to him if I have to. It's ... _bullshit_ that men keep doing that to you. I don't care that we're divorced; I'd still kill someone for you and Carrie."  
  
 _"Arthur!"_  
  
He bit the inside corner of his cheek, a stuffy breath of varying smells -- old air freshener, toxic funk, gas station gas, old herbs and sauces forced its way into his nostrils, stinging his lungs with needed air.  
  
They stared at each other.  
  
"I'm _fine._ Carrie ... Carrie is _fine,"_ she insisted, the blush of her high cheeks spreading to the shiny bulb of her nose. Turning the key in the sticky ignition, the AC blasted to overstimulating life. Arthur's fingers shook gently by his side. "Let me deal with Keith on my own, alright? It's just an argument he and I are having about ... y'know, about ... the baby. Nothing that you need to get involved in besides taking her in while he and I have our time apart."  
  
He took in a gentler breath, the rock-steady beat of spiked adrenaline shaking him from his chest, but subduing its furious pace. Blinking, he thought.  
  
"... I can ... I can take her in for tomorrow and Monday," he considered. "But I have things I need to do. I _wanna_ keep her with me _all the time,_ but I need a job to be able to support her."  
  
"Well what about your child support money? You haven't blown it all on hookers and coke, have you?" she teased.  
  
A crackling, pitied cackle pierced their ear drums. He laughed, unsure if he was supposed to, but the blister of indignation twisted at the skin of his temple. Rose's time was bought with _his_ money.  
  
"I want to keep that money strictly for Carrie," he said earnestly. "... If I can help it."  
  
Her lips thinned, frog-like, and she nodded in acceptance at the answer. A fat blonde curl, cracked with hairspray, sat on her shoulder, moving as she did.  
  
"With ... without offending you ..." she began, locking on his gaze. "Can I ask why you got fired?"  
  
He frowned. The well-rehearsed lie in his head scratched at his throat like an uncooked kernel of popcorn, stuck and painful.  
  
As painful as the sound of iron clattering on the floor of a hospital ward. As painful as the instantly reviled faces of sick children, one moment enthralled by him and instantly afraid of him. They were _afraid of him._  
  
He closed his eyes, brows tight together again. Taking in a deep breath, "People complained I wasn't funny enough."  
  
His eyes opened up on his lap, his jaw crooked to the right. A half-eaten cup of potato salad stared up at him, willing him to smash it under his foot and break the plastic like he wanted to break someone's jaw. The very fresh memory of Hoyt, hands on hips like a stereotypical mouthy housewife -- _"You get ten minutes to empty the locker and get the fuck out of my face"_ \-- stayed painful and funny in his mind. His fist still burned pink where he'd knocked the punch-in clock clean off the wall. He did not feel a single shred of humility about it.  
  
"They treated you like shit at that job anyway," Joss said. "I'm shocked you lasted as long as you did."  
  
He nodded, his eyes trailing on the movements of her spindly fingers, pink and oddly delicate, until they disappeared in the mane of crunchy yellow waves, ruffling her hair at the scalp. He could practically _hear_ the cracking hairspray.  
  
"I would've been okay being a stay-at-home dad 'til she went to preschool," he admitted, unwilling to admit out loud -- though it was well-known -- that he would've been much more of a mess letting her go to school if he was out of work or a hobby besides taking care of her 'round the clock. Her first day of school had done a number on him, more than he cared to let her know.  
  
"Well, we had to get the bills paid somehow," she mused, the words reciprocated with a nod of acknowledgement. Unenviable juices seeped out of the last meatball in her sub sandwich, the corner of a fork prong disappearing into a coating of cheese and herbs, the bread soggy beyond desirability.  
  
"D'you ..." She cleared her throat. There was a lurch in her stomach, an interior prodding that Arthur caught dead-on. He winced in sympathy at the hitch of her breath. "... Have you ever thought if our lives might've ... been easier if we chose not to have a kid?"  
  
His brow quirked for a moment, the inside of his bottom lip snagged between his teeth. Years earlier he might've thought the question offensive. If it was anybody besides Joss, he might've cried himself into a laughing fit; _yes, it's hard and I hate it sometimes, but look at her, look at how much I love her, please know I love her, Your Honor, Joss, please don't take her away from me._  
  
"I don't like to think what my life could be if we didn't have Carrie," he said quietly. "And we didn't really choose to have her. I feel bad in my life now. If I didn't have her here ..."  
  
He shook his head. No more, no more.  
  
"I'm not saying that to mean I regret that we had her," Joss retracted. "I just mean ... do you think we might still be married if we ... at least waited?"  
  
The air pricked his skin and stabbed his lungs. A pin-prick lodged into his frontal lobe. This was not the first time the question had been asked and it had long ago stopped offending him, but the hurt was still as potent as the garbage that pervaded their city.  
  
"Only you know the answer to that," he clipped, reigning himself in to shy away from a potential fight. "You were the one who filed for divorce."  
  
Did he want to know if they could've worked? He wasn't sure. It had been done and that was that. He had the same kid to look out for as he had for four years previous. At the cost of his home, money, his pride, his sex life, and every obscene and wonderful desire he'd had yet to fulfill with the woman he expected to spend more than twelve years with, he came out of the divorce with the majority over their daughter. Something told him she was worth it.  
  
"Do you mind if I just drive around for a little bit?" she asked, although her head was already curled against the head of the gear stick, primed to drive whether he was ready or not. The sandwich was tucked back into the bag, its use for her expended.  
  
"It's your car," he said simply. "But we need to pick Carrie up by four o'clock."  
  
"I just saw one of those big-ass rats run out of the store," she announced, beginning to turn the car around and careen for an exit. "Remind me to drive out to Newark if I need gas. Gotham just isn't cutting it."  
  
He wasn't sure the last time Gotham _cut it_ for anything. Fruitless dreams of family vacations in California and Hawaii had reworked into muddled plans of smuggling out to Denver.  
  
"Where are we going?"  
  
"I don't know ... just driving," she said. "I'm only gonna get bigger so I wanna drive while I still can."  
  
"What do you mean? You drove to the hospital while you were in labor," he countered, a hit of instant regret swallowing whatever he was about to say next. _She didn't have a choice not to._  
  
Conversation and eating dwindled. Dense, dewy smog took hold of peaceful white clouds, polluting the sky with murky grey. The last time Arthur could remember a supremely clear night sky ... he and Joss were two years into dating, driving circles around the park to clear his stomach ulcers until the sun couldn't endure their company. They had wound up on the hood of her car, counting stars to distract him until his pain receded.  
  
He was inclined to doubt she would extend such a courtesy now, but she kept him constantly suspended in question.  
  
"Wait --" he remembered, eyes flashing. "You said Thomas Wayne?"  
  
"Yep."  
  
"... My mom's been trying to get some letter for him for months. She won't stop asking me about it," he explained. "C -- could you, y'know ... would you be able to give the letter to him?"  
  
"What could your mother possibly want with Thomas Wayne?" Joss balked, her eyes peeling from the busy road only momentarily to lock eyes with him. He hoped his earnestness was on display.  
  
"She worked for the Waynes thirty or so years ago. I don't know what she really wants to get a hold of them about, but ..."  
  
"I'm not her daughter-in-law anymore," she laughed, mirthful and drenched in disdain. "I don't need to do her favors. She may be my daughter's grandmother, but it wasn't exactly like she welcomed me into the family before Carrie came along."  
  
Arthur swallowed, nodding. He knew the feeling, in his family and in hers. His ex-father-in-law wasn't the most kindred of spirits.  
  
"What if it was a favor for me?" he considered. "So she'll stop bothering me with it."  
  
There was a long sigh, regrettable with the mesh of blended air in the car.  
  
"I'll consider it."  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _Three-year-old Carrie Fleck sat on the floor of her living room, suckling a pacifier but unsatisfied.  
_  
 _Unassuming to her childish mind, her parents had agreed to limit the pacifier to emergencies only. They'd been eating dinner around their little table, the conversation indecipherable to her but growing higher in volume from her mom, until she'd stalked off to their bedroom. Daddy had set her on the floor with a kiss to the forehead and the offer of a pacifier, her green beans and pot roast only half-finished, smeared along her plate to feign eating when they weren't looking.  
_  
 _She was regretfully hungry now, and entirely alone. Her parents had been gone for an hour, the only instruction thrown her way when she'd latched onto the handle (locked) being **"Away from the door"** by her mother. She sounded irritated.  
_  
 _They sounded like they were jumping around. That hadn't made her curious enough to deter her from the stack of spelling blocks. It was only at the weird calls of **"Don't stomp"** from her mother, while she herself sat on the floor in front of the TV, that she was interested enough to investigate the thumps and calls. They grew louder and then stopped suddenly in random patterns.  
_  
 _Carrie huffed and chewed on her pacifier, bored with it and with the blocks. She knew how to spell "cat" and "red" and "bad." There were only so many times she could go over it, and Mr. Rogers was already over on the TV.  
_  
 _Her eyes roved, searching. One of her top teeth nested into the indent of her pacifier. From the bedroom, she didn't understand the growl of **"Ride me"** that seeped from under the door, but it warred for her attention until --  
_  
 ** _Aha.  
_**  
 _She forgot that she'd set Frankie against the dish rack that morning to help Mommy with the dishes. It was one of the rare Fridays where everyone was home, and she had wanted to include him in the family time that was now being wasted without her.  
_  
 _Toddling over, Carrie grabbed a fistful of the dish rag that peered over the sink counter. She stretched up onto her toes for leverage, a pudgy hand grasping for the familiar comfort of Frankie's right paw. In the months since her teeth had become more prominent, Mommy had warned her to stop teething on him, but she wasn't here anyway to tell her not to.  
_  
 _She pulled further, edging him nearer to his grasp.  
_  
 _Her fingers felt the starchy fur, dried by her own drool ...  
_  
 ** _What --  
_**  
 ** _THWACK!  
_**  
 _Carrie clutched her head, a sharp, high pain crashing her body down to the earth. The pacifier dropped from her mouth. A series of hard sobs muffled into her hand, interwoven with the mocking warbles of the plate. It spun and spun, growing in volume, dizzying her.  
  
Another hand covered her eyes, spilling over with tears as she curled unto herself. Her head throbbed.  
_  
 _She was in pain, hungry, and totally alone.  
_  
 _She was alone until she wasn't.  
_  
 _Until just a minute later, a hand -- one she knew, one that was human and very soft, despite the rough exterior -- clasped over her own, and she heard her daddy tutting, "You hurt yourself?"  
_  
 _She nodded with a hiccup, the sting of air squeezing her eyes shut when he pulled one of her hands away. The other wrapped under her ribs, leaving her weightless as he pulled her into his soothing arms. He was wearing different pants than what he'd had on at dinner, and his collarbones were sticky with sweat, but she didn't fuss against him.  
_  
 _"What are you doing, hitting your head?" he admonished, although a kiss was rested on the stinging bump of her head. It throbbed still. "There's precious cargo in there, Peanut."  
_  
 _Her eyes landed downward, at the fumbling of her thumbs clasping and unclasping her right overall strap, before going back to Frankie. A stray tear cooled on her pudgy cheek.  
_  
 _"You want Frankie?" he asked, bringing the faithful rabbit to her with ease as soon as she nodded. "Here, let's snuggle with Momma while I clean up the table, okay, Peanut? You can take a nap together."  
_  
 _He carried her through the little threshold of their home, her little arms wrapped around his neck. One finger traced over the landscape of his right shoulder with some interest, the skin mountainous and concave. A tear dripped across the bridge of her nose as she kept her head against him.  
_  
 _Mommy looked to be asleep. She was turned to the wall, her back bare to them, the blanket covering only the mound of her chest. Carrie remembered from the shower that they were called some word that started with a B. Her head pulsed too hard for her to remember much clearly.  
_  
 _"She did hit her head," Daddy explained. "A plate fell off the drying rack."  
_  
 _"Mm-hmm."  
_  
 _He huffed, causing Carrie to look up. The bedding was ruffled, the pillow to her left damp to the touch. He flipped it over.  
_  
 _"Can you please just watch her while I clean the kitchen?" he asked, and Carrie sensed his tiredness. Mom did not stir.  
_  
 _"You don't have to **ask** me to look after my own child."  
_  
 _"Well, sometimes I feel like I need to."  
_  
 _He left the room, but left the door open in his wake. Carrie stared at her mother, at her unmoving, flexed shoulders, and decided against trailing the same landscaped against the spine of her back. She didn't want her hand to be smacked away again like the last time she'd caught her mother by surprise with an innocent touch.  
_  
 _The rest of the evening, she fell asleep and woke up in odd increments.  
_  
 _Mommy woke her up for a brief moment, a stifled cry into a pillow alerting her little heart to speed up, but she didn't dare try to comfort before waning back into her dream.  
_  
 _Her daddy had woken her for a brief few minutes to switch her overall dress for her favorite Mickey Mouse onesie. The room was soaked in orange and black lamp light. Mommy was sleep again, and she found herself sandwiched between both her parents, one of Daddy's arm curling around her snug frame, murmuring, "A big girl needs new pj's soon, doesn't she?"  
_  
 _When she woke again in the morning, patterned light drenching their bed for lack of proper curtains, her mother was nowhere to be seen._


	24. Pretty Girl, Pretty Woman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEED THE TAG WARNINGS, there is a HEAVY trigger warning looming over this whole chapter

_Before Jocelyn Soucie (Jocelyn **Fleck,** he reminded himself -- always always Jocelyn **Fleck)** came into his life, Arthur didn't age. He just morphed.  
_  
 _Birthdays, the unobtainable event that he only had astute knowledge of from his education of movies and television, was never particularly observed or handled with care in the Fleck household. Twenty years had come and gone through his life without a party, without cake, without invitations to pass to other kids in class through cowboy-print cards or by word-of-mouth.  
_  
 _Whether it was his birthday or someone else's, it didn't matter. They made him very aware that **he** didn't matter. The collection of cards in the elementary classrooms was somehow always one person short.  
_  
 _He only knew it was his birthday each year at all when Penny, having had a good payday or remembered to save, adorned the kitchen table without discussion some odd September 2nd with a present in decades-old once-green wrapping paper. Some years, if lady luck had been on their side, it was two. On his tenth birthday, it was a barrel of toy monkeys. His sixteenth and eighteenth birthdays, it was a new pair of shoes.  
_  
 _There was also the one story he'd heard some years ago when he was a child, that he was brought into the world in a screaming heave just a few hours after news of the war's end had reached American airwaves.  
_  
 _He didn't enjoy, but he acknowledged. The end of one tragedy marked the beginning of another. He grew. He morphed.  
_  
 _Then Jocelyn Soucie threw him into the shark-infested waters of social birthdays for his twenty-first.  
_  
 _In five years of these insufferably sweet but alien celebrations, he'd learned the very basic fundamentals of himself and his surroundings: he apparently loved ice cream cake (although his mounting medications did not), it was unwise to put both Penny and her parents in the same room at the same time (barring their wedding -- his twenty-second birthday dinner at the Soucie household went unspoken of by all parties), and Joss' tongue held a silver language against his skin.  
_  
 _His twenty-seventh birthday, the sixth birthday in his entire life with which somebody besides himself gave any expression of anticipation, he awoke to the drifting smell of bacon and the image of his wife -- **hah, my wife, look at her** \-- in her special red nighties.  
_  
 _Damn near translucent, they were. The freckles of her belly were exposed as he liked them, her blonde hair practically white from the half-assed privacy of their window slats.  
_  
 _"Bad news on the birthday menu board, Mr. Fleck," she announced, already skirting her way along the imprint of his legs beneath their white bed sheets. "Laverne helped herself to the friggin' strawberry jam, and we're out of margarine, so we'll have to make do without toast for breakfast."  
_  
 _The added weight pressed against his thighs encouraged him to sit up, a genial warmth sparking electric currents though them as the sweet buds of her breasts grew under the friction of her scratchy red bra. Keeping himself supported with one arm, the other found itself trailing against the hem of her matching underwear. He smiled into her breast.  
_  
 _"Oh, Jesus **God,** Arthur," she groaned. He suspected more annoyance than arousal, although the sporadic pace of her heart as his hand found the front of her suggested that was subject to change. Something apeish and distinctly primitive salivated his teeth as his fingers found the light brown hairs of her pubic bone.  
_  
 _ **"Already?** Arthur, I have bacon and hot cakes on the stove; I don't want them to burn."  
_  
 _"Not hungry for that," he muttered, slurring the trivial words against the space between her breasts. She'd showered well before he woke up, her hair already soft and smelling of coconut oil where it spilled over her shoulder.  
_  
 _Her hands found his face and tilted him up -- tradition that predated their generation, but so sweet, **so sweet** and unlike anything he could've ever imagined for himself. A loud smooch, lips stacked on lips, reverberated around the cramped little bedroom. It was completely innocent, shooing away the anticipation that had wracked him since the night earlier.  
_  
 _"You got morning breath," she commented, although she kept him close, her nose bumping his. Some golden hair shielded him from the window light. "You want some birthday lip service? Brush your teeth."  
_  
 _"I love you, Joss," he breathed, affronted with the swat of a hand in front of her face as she sat up.  
_  
 _"I love you, too, even when your breath stinks," she laughed. "But you won't get birthday nookie if that's what you'll be breathing into my ear."  
_  
 _She leaned into his own, a smirking, stifled giggle sharpening in his brain and his ever-present cock as she pecked away at his upper neck.  
_  
 _"Be a good boy and brush your teeth after breakfast and we might not have to go to the movie tonight. I got us tickets for Last House on the Left, but we could be able to have fun here."  
_  
 _Staving off an urge to throw her off and get his teeth brushed and run back to bed, Arthur let his eyes roll back into his head. The hand caressing her front skimmed her back, joining into his other hand, and he held her wordlessly. His mouth buried into her shoulder, not kissing obscenely, but resting.  
_  
 _Twenty years was a long, long time to wait for someone to enjoy his birthday. To just enjoy his **being.**  
_  
 _She'd caught him crying once on his birthday, passing it off as a fluke from the obscene overstimulation of her having gone down on him. If she knew that he regularly curled in on himself these last few birthdays, smiling himself into misty-eyed sleep as her arm sweetly thrummed the stretched apron of his ribs, she kept that knowledge to herself.  
_  
 _The bathroom mirror acknowledged someone Arthur Fleck supposed was once himself, but more alive-looking. He couldn't remember any time in his first twenty years where he'd gotten breakfast and a present of some sort in the same day.  
_  
 _More alive-looking, with a toothbrush leaving him frothing at the mouth and a red polka-dot bra draped across his arm. His wife had amped their kitchen radio and followed him into their bathroom with swaying hips and full breasts. He rolled his eyes, not entirely unamused.  
_  
 _"I thought you weren't in the mood yet," he said, mouth stinging with foam.  
_  
 _"I never said I wasn't," she refuted, her hands toying with the unclasped straps that lazily lurched his hooked arm toward her. "I just have better self-control than you do. If I was down to your level, I'd let you have me on the sink."  
_  
 _A tantalizing idea, but as disastrous in its implications as the last time they'd tried it in the bathroom. Seeing Joss freshly out of the shower a few weeks earlier had robbed him of his mannerly defenses, and they'd wound up in the dry bathtub with her on top of him. Two broken shampoo bottles, bruised knees on her end, a mild concussion his limited their amorous activities to the bedroom.  
_  
 _That wasn't to say he didn't appreciate or acknowledge the hands skimming the front of his white shirt, ensnaring him into a hug from behind. The peaks of her breasts tamped into the outlines of his outstretched shoulder blades. The corner of one blue eye crinkled as her cheek caressed his oblong scapula, a sweet, girlish hand leveling to pin a dark brown curl from his forehead.  
_  
 _"Now are you gonna appreciate me being a pretty woman or not?"  
_  
 _He spit into the sink, leaning down to wash away the sudsy residue. When he came up, he looked at her, foolishly smitten.  
_  
 _"When am I ever not allowed to appreciate you, Mrs. Fleck?"  
_  
\- - - -  
  
Mom's hand glided like velvet against Carrie's blood-blushed cheek, perfumed with tropical lotion that soothed her earlobe where Mom's ring finger rested, cold and comforting.  
  
"Alright, flutter your lashes for me."  
  
She did as instructed, the mound of her right eyelid gaining some resistance as her mother inched the mascara brush closer and closer still. The plastic fan in one corner, an accent to what Mom considered "heat stroke" from the sporadic weather patterns of Gotham's summers, assailed her bare shoulders and arms. That, coupled with Roy Orbison's rhythmic drum march on the radio, shimmied her shoulders in her golden dress.  
  
It hugged her belly from the bit of height she'd gained since its last wear around Christmas, and she now had to wear white tights to not show off her calves, as Mom said that would be immodest.  
"Okay, your hair," Mom muttered, setting the makeup tube aside and meandering past her, with what limited availability she had. Her growing tummy was more pronounced in her shiny blue dress, textured like cling wrap. Her own hair was combed over in thick curls that had taken at least an hour to maintain.  
  
"Oh, Carrie, you're gonna look so _pretty,"_ Mom was cooing. Something cold slathered against her scalp, smelling of old mousse bottles that she'd become accustomed to in years of similar boring parties -- _engagements,_ Mom called them. "Just like Princess Di. Didn't you say your class wrote letters to send to the Princess to read before her wedding?"  
  
"Mm-hmm. I asked her what kind of flowers she's gonna have."  
  
"Y'know, when I married your father, I had the most _beautiful_ pink camellia bouquet. They looked almost like paper lanterns, they were so fresh. When you get married, what kind of flowers do you want?"  
  
Carrie's lips, glossy and tasting of Hershey's chocolate (she'd found a half-eaten tube of chapstick in her vanity drawer), curled into a grimace that squished one cheek. Her eyes clamped shut. The hairbrush was doing a hard job of leaving strident pink marks of its own across her forehead, hidden in a side-swept tuft of bangs.  
  
"I don't think I want to ever get married," she decided.  
  
 ** _"What?"_**  
  
She cringed at the tone, and her eyes opened up on her mother, the hairbrush as warning to her as a deadly assault weapon. Her mother looked good-natured, but she knew it sounded bad. A smattering of mascara clung to her rose-tinted cheek where she attempted to flutter her lashes in gentility, her jaw jutting out to maintain a firm stance.  
  
"Mom, weddings are so _boring!"_ she exclaimed. This earned a scoff before the brush continued its attack on her hair, this time teasing the little bit that grazed her neck.  
  
"They're only boring when you're not the bride. Carrie, you _have_ to get married when you're older," her mother countered.  
  
 _"Why?"_  
  
"It's every girl's _right,_ that's why. I need somebody to pass on my wedding dress to, and I have a feeling this little one is going to be a little too boyish for it. Marrying your dad was the best day of my life."  
  
"Daddy said me being born was the best day of his life."  
  
"Ah, _no,"_ she corrected, the brush gentler along the apex of her head, although her tone made up for the bruise to her ego. "The best _night_ of his life, maybe. It was the best night of _my_ life, when I saw your cute little coneheaded self, but it was the worst _day_ for us. The best day was our wedding."  
  
"Then why are you and him not married anymore?" she questioned, a quirked eyebrow hidden beneath a mass of hair. It was a better alternative to showing the crush of the words.  
  
"Because he and I were dummies and got married too young. But if we hadn't gotten married, we wouldn't have had you, so zip up that dummy attitude."  
  
Her head tilted in acknowledgement of this, partially out of her control as the brush pulled her to the left. An army of spiders embedding their pincers into her skull, warring for her attention with the rivulets of butterflies in her stomach, their gold and blue wings batting and curling around the distend of her ribs.  
  
"Carrie, did you know this song is partly the reason you exist?"  
  
An involuntary blush deepened under her makeup, nipping red circles around her already rosy checks. Her mouth curled into a squishy-cheeked grimace, unsure of her mom's meaning. She often said things that left Carrie to only guess their meaning. Two weeks ago they'd passed through the medicine aisle at the store and Mom said to Keith, _"We didn't have this and that's why we are where we are"_ as they passed a half-shelf of jelly containers and boxes of rubber dots.  
  
A wind chill of an unpleasant thought, ice cold against her skin, was invoked by the memory.  
  
"Is Keith going to be there?" she asked, a slip of a wince slicing the amiable air of the room as Mom tugged the brush once more.  
  
"Carrie, if he is, just ignore him and stay by me," she sighed. "Please, baby? He won't bother us. Tonight is too important. We're better than him, anyway, aren't we?"  
  
Carrie hummed quietly, her eyes wandering, less vocal against the brush's harsh machinations. Her tone was discordant and tight-lipped, the pudgy tip of her tongue prodding the backs of her teeth to avoid saying anything more.  
  
Roy Orbison's guitar was winding to a low ebbing decrescendo as Mom splayed soft, playfully nipping fingertips through her bouffed hair. They warmed her head, as a mother's touch was oft to do, but they were distracted in their comfort.  
  
"Oh gosh, cherry girl -- you look like a _princess."_  
  
The spinning wicker chair was turned in the direction of the vanity mirror that faced the end of the bed. Carrie's nose crinkled. Neither did she feel she looked like a princess nor smelt like cherries -- Mom had drenched her in the awful doctor's shampoo two nights earlier, combing her hair over the most sensitive, dandruff-addled part of her scalp. She now smelled of tar and outdated Estee Lauder perfume.  
  
On the vanity, sporting the very side-swept hair that Carrie now shared, Princess Diana's frame looked quite suffocated in her buttoned ascot -- a far cry from the pin-pricked chill of Carrie's shoulders. TIME Magazine lauded her as _The Prince's Charmer._  
  
Carrie's gaze flitted rapidly from the Princess' hair to her own, her mouth squishing into a side grimace. Her shoulders slumped.  
  
"I want curly hair," she protested, "... like Daddy's hair."  
  
Her mother scoffed, taking a place to her left and snatching the mascara tube for herself. Carrie watched her bend over, flitting her lashes in a similar manner to cake on the blots of black makeup.  
  
"You are _enough_ like your daddy," she stated. A grimaced stung Carrie's inner skin raw with embarrassment, the words having many times before been used with stronger malice and vitriol. "Let us be princesses for one night, okay, baby?"  
  
Carrie rolled her back into the wicker chair, staring deep at the girl in the mirror. She was older, her face shrouded in riddles and coiffed hair. One blue eye shined bright and wide, the other almost buried beneath the swoop of moussed bangs. She felt more party clown than people's princess.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Stored away in the back of a photo album under her mother's bed, for what she supposed was her mother's eyes only, Carrie had long ago found old black and white pictures of her family.  
  
Her mother occasionally pointed out the little chapel they'd worked their backs out to afford for the venue. _See that there, how small it is?_ she would say. _We worked for months to be able to afford it, that little thing next to the bakery._  
  
Indeed next to a Heaven Scent bakery, the chapel was white, although its chipped double doors were an olive green. She'd suspected a dark color in the grainy photographs, its tone offset by the white of Mom's beautiful teacup dress and Daddy's black suit, arms linked in front of it. His hair was short, just a tuft of wispy curls barely sustaining against his sharp jaw. Mom wore a cosseting smile, her teeth big and white and bared to him, as adoring a young bride as Carrie had ever seen. She never smiled at anybody else like that -- not even at Carrie herself.  
  
They looked like porcelain figurines. Shiny and young, she expected them to be models for wedding cake toppers. She'd never seen her father eat cake, but the pictures were there: Mom's hand leveled, sullied with a slice of wedding cake _(marble with buttercream,_ Mom reported once. _Your grandma made it because your nana refused to),_ angled to Dad's open, if unprepared mouth. By far her favorite picture was of them cutting the cake together, even if it was a bit icky to see them kissing.  
  
That she was a child of two economic ends of the same spectrum (Mom was _never_ one to let her go without counting their blessings) was surreal at times. Just the Sunday earlier, the same man from those adoring wedding photos was fixing her the third peanut butter sandwich within the week because it was what she was used to and enjoyed. That very Thursday, Daddy had taken her to the toy store and she cautioned against spending a whole $25 because _that's for saving. We need to save up for Colorado, Daddy.  
_  
Now she was a reserved guest at one of the most revered men in the history of Gotham.  
  
Wayne Hall was a hot spot for loiterers this evening. People in clown masks had mysteriously begun to pop up in the city. From what little she'd heard, an incident at one of the train stations left Thomas Wayne without three employees, and a clown had something to do with it. They leered and jeered, at least one getting close enough for them to hear, _"You gonna talk, rich bitch, or you got that silver spoon stuck up your ass?"_  
  
Her head bowed, the tips of her fingers bulbing red as Mom's grip grew more fierce.  
  
Photographers clung to the stairway banisters like inch worms, their dizzying cameras popping Carrie's vision with white and then black as her mother pulled her along. Several paces away, a group of other made-up women in cocktail dresses -- the first targets of the photographers' machinations -- waved and called to Carrie's mother. She waved back to them.  
  
Unconsciously Carrie tugged at the hem of her jacket. It was nowhere near appropriate weather for one, but heaven forbid the entrails of seeping garbage that lay filmy and thick in the air could cling to her skin, and be dragged into Wayne Hall. Her fingernail drew over the serene and smooth thread of the pink butterfly crest on the denim material. She knew it was unusual. No other student at Van Buren got their picture in the paper ... except the student of the week title for VB Roadrunner Weekly. Just because she was used to these instances, did not mean she _liked_ them. Not when she looked so silly.  
  
Through the fringes of her bangs, Carrie looked up with some interest at the behemoth of the building. It sat just in the boundary of Gotham's "projects," where she and her father lived -- the mountain among littles. If it was to make the poor feel at least a little more rich, its closeness with tiny wedding chapels and independent bakeries only served to make Carrie feel smaller when she was on her father's time.  
  
There was no shooing away its beauty, though. In between four lanterns, each of them half her height and steeped in black and gold, there were three bricked archways and intricate glass doors. A red tongue of a carpet pooled out of the middle door, where Mom lead them.  
  
"Jocelyn Soucie. Reservation for table nineteen."  
  
The rest of Mom's words reduced to a buzz in her ears, the shrieks of outside cameras piercing and echoed. Her lips parted, her jaw slacking in awe. Scarlet and gold surfaced in her vision. The mahogany temp desk, lined with liqueurs and wines, warred for her appreciation with the gold-trimmed theatre banners. Great crystalized chandeliers garlanded the ceiling. Illustrious beams of light ornamented the walls, as bright as stars and as big as herself.  
  
"Carrie? _Carrie Frances,"_ Mom stressed, causing her shoulders to jump. "Give the man your jacket."  
  
"Will I get it back?" she asked, nonetheless shimmying out of the material. The dry heat from outside pervaded the blades of her shoulders. The air inside was clear and fresh, but threatened a coalition with the stink of garbage.  
  
The gentleman Mom was addressing chuckled softly, taking her jacket in one large hand.  
  
"You will get it back, Ma'am, don't worry." He was _British._ Carrie's heart zealed. She'd only ever met one Englishman before -- the strange man from her father's work. Outside of him, people with accents were as fantastical as dragons, or the Hobbits from her story books.  
  
"If I may, I can show you to the coat check room."  
  
"There's a whole room for _coats?"_  
  
Mom's laugh intermixed with the man's own. Her satin glove drove a rivulet of enjoyed warmth down her exposed upper back. She didn't find it as funny as she did curious. All shoes and coats and hats at Anderson Avenue were kept on the tidy rack right inside the front door. Even her heavy weather wear was limited to what she could stuff in the hall closet and her own closet when she was at Mom's house.  
  
The coat room was of less grandeur than what Carrie had anticipated, but a marvel in size nonetheless. She'd have to stack her two bedrooms right next to each other to find a reasonable comparison. Mink, wool, cashmere, feather boas, peacoats, beaded purses, leather bags ...  
  
Her jacket was hung up on a hanger with tag with a bolded **#113,** pressed against a faux fox scarf.  
  
"If you can't remember this number when you want it back," the Englishman said, his posture bowed to press his hands to his knees and bring his pudged, bearded face close to Carrie's own, "... you may find me to hand-deliver it to you. Just remind me of the butterfly."  
  
She smiled. The man's eyes were blue, as her and her mother's were, but darker in these harsh lights. They gave the impression to her of the emperor butterfly she'd learned of years ago in kindergarten. He did not smile at her as though she looked as silly as she felt, but with the same geniality as though everyone else was expected to emulate Princess Diana.  
  
Mom took her hand again, and the man led them back through to the entryway. His strides were long, hands swinging leisurely. Carrie wasn't sure she'd ever seen a man walk with such confidence. Her father's hands swayed when he walked, but did not swing lazily.  
  
He brought them up a set of two grand staircases. Distended in the high walls, piquing her interest, were what looked to be opera balconies. A distinct memory hit her of being five, nearly six. Mom had taken her to see the musical about the crazed barber. They sat in the second box away from the right hand of the stage. She thought she could _smell_ the terrible pies and fake blood.  
  
One set of mahogany double doors led them into a great banquet room. Some tables -- the amount in total unquestionable -- seemed to already be seated and served, and the smell of delectable rolls drifted to Carrie's vicinity. She stuck her nose into the air, her head twisting to keep sight of the scent even as she was led to In the left corner, very far away from her and driving further away, a gaggle of four old men in stuffy suits were arranging their stringed instruments. The front stage area was bare, save for a single wooden podium with the bolded words **THOMAS WAYNE -- INVEST IN GOTHAM.**  
  
Five chairs encased a round white table, adorned with five plates and utensil sets. Two candles and a set of roses (fake, she could tell) acted as their centerpiece. Carrie climbed into one chair and grabbed the small laminated menu that adorned her plate. The Englishman walked from them with the promise of a waiter to be sent over shortly.  
  
"What's an appetizer?" Carrie questioned, trailing a digit over the long word.  
  
"It's food you eat before your dinner is served," Mom explained. "What are you thinking, cherry girl? Slow roasted meatballs or baked brie for us?"  
  
"So it's like the margarita dip when we go to El Maguey?"  
  
"Don't talk about that kind of place here," she replied hastily. "But yes, like that."  
  
Two creases paralleled each other in the space between Carrie's brows. Mom had these funny moods at these events where she turned her nose up to restaurants they frequented when they had the time. Wasn't it Mom who planned their visit to the Soda Fountain for her birthday last year? Was there a taboo against mothers and daughters splitting root beer floats and hot dogs just because they weren't on Thomas Wayne's fancy menus? They'd had an exceptionally wonderful time shoveling salt water taffies and chocolates from candy barrels. November wasn't _that_ long ago, was it?  
  
"Mom, how old are you turning this year?"  
  
"Me? I'll be thirty-five, baby."  
  
"How old will Daddy be?"  
  
"Thirty-six in September."  
  
"And I'll be nine next year?"  
  
"Ugh, _please_ don't remind me, Carrie."  
  
The attempts to straight her posture were snuffed as a teasing satin hand cramped her into her seat, gentle and ruffling with the direction that her hair swayed. She smiled down into her lap politely, having caught mom smiling playfully out of her periphery. Mom's gentle touch knew how to make her forget things. They knew how to make her smile and feel more kiddish than she'd felt in a long time. They --  
  
"What's this?"  
  
With some interest, Carrie fumbled for the card of interest on her plate, layered with a larger strip of royal navy beneath it. Typewriter print made her frown. The name bearing into her skull, so red and violent in its boldness, deepened the intensity of her glower.  
  
She had no idea who _**CARRIE ROBBINS** _was, but she hated her.  
  
 _"Shit,"_ Mom hissed quietly, snatching the paper from her unprepared fingers. They sprung open like a lobster's claw, free of its offending bandage in the scalding warnings of a hot underground. "Sorry, baby."  
  
"Why -- why does it say Keith's last name is _my_ last name?"  
  
"I ..." There was a huff. The paper grew small, smaller, smaller still, as it was folded relentlessly into squares. "Carrie, I made these reservations _months_ ago. Keith and I made them _together."_  
  
"My last name is Fleck, Mom." Her jaw tightened. Whether her mother was genuinely trembling or her vision was warbling, she wasn't sure. A taut inhale that flared her nostrils sharpened the bones in her exposed sternum.  
  
"Yours doesn't have his last name," she observed, her hand moving with the speed of a viper. Venom seared her eyes, the whites teeming with threads of red agony.  
  
"Listen --" Mom's hand came up in the way that Carrie had long ago come to recognize as _damage control._ Only ever in public, around people -- _important_ people. At home, screaming was fair game. "Tonight, we aren't Flecks, or Robbinses. We're Soucies, okay? _Soucie_ girls are stronger than any man out there."  
  
She doubted that, and sized the card with a wearied look for good measure. _**CARRIE ROBBINS** _was not and would not ever be the daughter of _**JOCELYN SOUCIE.**_  
  
And she knew, for all the well intentions of those words, how strong the Fleck and Robbins men could be. It hadn't been too many indistinguishable years ago that her father was seamlessly carrying her on his hip with one arm and handling the phone or the groceries in another. It would be a very terrible day before Daddy would refuse to piggyback her around the house after a long, laboring day at Ha-Ha's. His example for her of how a man was to treat a woman was restrained, tender. He used his strength for the good of her.  
  
Unlike Keith, and the pin-sized pupils that bore into her weakest terrors as he crushed her into her own bed by the collarbone. Whatever the argument was between Mom and Keith that permeated the foyer, Daddy's name had been involved, and Carrie found herself the lightning rod of this man's anger. Months later and she could still feel the zing of nervous pain if she put down enough pressure.  
  
A basket of rolls was placed in front of their plates. Their waiter was rushed away with an order of meatballs, lemonade, and some expensive-sounding drink. Carrie did not stir or make to grab for a roll. Her mother split into one, dolloping it with the side dish of butter that made drool drivel beneath her tongue like a hapless dog.  
  
She crossed her arms. Carrie _Fleck_ didn't want high class foods. Frankenberry cereals and ham sandwiches in a dim apartment kitchen sounded much more appetizing.  
  
"Carrie, c'mon -- I know you want rolls and butter."  
  
She huffed, her lips souring. Breakfast that morning was eggs and dry toast. Lunch was supplemented with helping Mom carry the laundry upstairs. It had been nine hours since last they ate.  
  
"Alright, don't eat." There was the smacking of bread between salivated teeth. Carrie's nose crinkled in a red-faced grimace. "I'll save you some and I'll eat for two."  
  
Little by little, flashes of color and garbled voices seeped into the blots of the boring dining hall. Carrie felt as though her ears were submerged in water. Air pockets of sound burst in her consciousness at random times -- the scraping of a butter knife, a raucous child a few tables over, the pitching of violins and cellos. Skimming the menu, Colorado lamb chops piqued her interest, but only momentarily.  
  
A sharp envelope corner poked at her underarm, teeming it with a smudge of deodorant. Not wanting to forget it within her jacket pocket, Carrie had swiped her nana's letter before they moved to the coat check, and tucked it into the confines of her gold bodice. Thomas Wayne had to be somewhere near.  
  
"Hey, _Jossy."_  
  
Carrie froze, hands quivering on impulse. Crescent moons scraped into the curl of her palms. Something ghostly and cold dragged a phantom finger down her spine, chilling her.  
  
A chair scraped the ground to her right. It bulleted through her ear drum. Two other chairs scraped backwards to hoist up the two boys that had been dragged along. Woody cologne dominated fresh rolls. There was no comfort in it. Her father's cologne was cheap but smelled like gardenias. Perfect for a girl to fall asleep against.  
  
Keith smelled like the power she worried of. She wondered if he could smell the fear that chilled the back of her neck -- a pupil-dilated shark in bloody water.  
  
Fingers drummed out of rhythm in her peripheral vision, spastic and relentless. The clunk of a silver Rolex against a shrouded table echoed over the sound of the stringed orchestra.  
  
"I didn't think you were coming," Mom said. High with mirth or disguised annoyance, Carrie wasn't sure.  
  
"Thirty dollars per plate, I thought I should give the boys a good dinner ... that's not hotel food."  
  
A mile of white cloth stretched on for infinite horizons, so clear that Carrie wondered in her own head if she'd passed out. At the end of this eternity, in the chair across from her, was Layne, his hair trimmed down to a dark brown bowl, his vest a spot of teary blue in her shaking vision.  
  
She looked down again, lost in the safe nothingness of the table's white blossom of purity.  
  
"Dad, I can't reach my plate."  
  
Carrie's eyelids burned hot as desert sand. Saucers of green eyes and Kevin's mushroom nose peered over the edge of the table toward Keith, whose hand gestured him forward. The clattering of dishes, the shuffling of leather shoes on the carpeted ground was muffled.  
  
"Come over here, bud, you can sit on my leg."  
  
The white of the table cloth projected the memory, clear as a movie theater screen.  
  
 ** _You can call me whatever makes you feel comfortable, just please no Dad or Daddy, alright? I just want you to be comfortable, kid. I don't wanna be your dad._**  
 ** _You don't need to be my dad._**  
  
Someone grabbed at her bodice, cracking the air free from her ribs. A seize of horror contracted her throat. _No no no NO NO --  
_  
Her legs were static, biting at the soles of her feet as she was pulled to stand. An electric blue clouded her vision, and Mom suddenly occupied her seat. Mom's head turned sharply between Keith and herself, before Carrie was set with an expectant look that -- though struggling for a steady intake of breath -- made her scramble for the seat to her left. The phantom pain left her ribs, as fleeting as air.  
  
Layne shared a curious glance with her and drank from the glass of water opposite his plate. The sinews of Mom's prominent shoulder blade curved as she turned to Keith. A hand curled over Kevin's dinner jacket, the Rolex watch assaulted with beams from the room's chandelier. Keith's leg bounced. Carrie tried not to focus on it, on him or his hands, or his leg.  
  
Water glass. Sinews. Shining Rolex. _Hand. Hand._  
  
A warm bread roll was crushed through the threads of her fingers, her arm impulsively numb and made of lead. The clatter of silverware at the contact of her elbow on the hard wood shot a real static pain through to her pinky (Daddy taught her it was the funny bone). Garbled conversation halted.  
  
"Hey," Mom said. A gentle, gloved swat to her shoulder may as well have bruised her. "That's not ladylike."  
  
Flecks of oiled crumbs fell into the mesh of fabric that was her dress. Bowing her head, the inelegantly crushed roll was torn and gnashed between her teeth, indelibly marred to taste by the indents of her fingerprints. She chewed slowly, less honed in on taste rather than distraction. Though keeping it closed, her jaw snapped like a feral cat, untrained and unassuming in its hunger ... like Auggie, the fat rascal --  
  
 _"Carrie --_ swallow it or quit chewing like that. You're not a _cow,"_ Mom huffed.  
  
The fat lump sat heavy in her mouth, thick as a wad of gum.  
  
"Did you get to find out if it's a boy or a girl, Ms. Soucie?"  
  
"Layne, sweetie, I told you a few months ago, you don't have to keep calling me that. You can just call me Jocelyn -- Ms. Soucie makes me feel like a grandma," Mom drawled, a breathy giggle like a drifting scent of toxic garbage outside among the tense atmosphere of the table. Carrie didn't see it but she could _feel_ it. "And it's for sure a boy. You're all gonna have one more baby _brother."_  
  
Carrie didn't know if she smiled, or if her eyes shifted at all. That she saw a little more of Mom's blue dress in her side vision gave her some indication that she'd moved, although she felt nearly statue-like.  
  
"And the baby's here in October?" Kevin asked, vibrating with the force of his father's zealed leg.  
  
"October second," Mom clarified. "But he might come a little earlier. My sweet cherry girl was born at thirty-six weeks."  
  
Did she flinch at the satin glove on her head? It was a tenderhearted swirl of her hair, but as painful as though she'd been clubbed down into her chair to try to push the gunk from her mouth. Her tongue was clasped between her teeth to stave off the shaking of her jaw.  
  
Too much, _too much --_  
  
"How many weeks is left?" Kevin asked.  
  
"Fifteen weeks, bud," his father responded. Lower -- "How are you feeling, Jossy?"  
  
"Don't be sweet," she sneered slightly, and Carrie could see the curl of her mother's lip without having to look. "Don't act like you care."

"Your order, sir?"  
  
The sludge of what was once a dinner roll drained down her throat. It was as fulfilling as the indecipherable sludge she saw in prison scenes on television. Voices drowned and drifted in tandem, and then halted.  
  
"Carrie? _Carrie --"_ There was the swat to her arm. Years familiar, but a knife's edge digging into the thin flesh and striking her bone. "Tell the man what you want."  
  
Her head turned left, slowly, then followed the black shoes and pants upward to see their young waiter with the thinning hair. The first emotion to strike her in as many minutes was embarrassment for his irritated expression at her lifelessness.  
  
Seizing the menu from the table, she pointed out the Colorado lamb, not nearly as hungry now (she felt like a felt doll, stuffed to the gills with cotton) but sensing her mother's exacerbating mood. Five sets of eyes pinned her to the spot.  
  
"The lamb chops and carrots?" the man read aloud. She nodded.  
  
"Carrie, don't be _rude._ Use your words."  
  
"For you, young man?" the waiter asked, turning, and Carrie felt oddly relieved to be ignored.  
  
"Jumbo shrimp cocktail," Layne said. "... Oh -- please. And a strawberry lemonade."  
  
"Jumbo shrimp?" Keith balked, a laugh etched into every syllable. "That's an appetizer, buddy. What about mac n cheese, like your brother? Keep it simple."  
  
"You _said_ whatever I want, Dad," Layne stated plainly. Carrie looked up to see a glass of lemonade on her plate, and a smile that could not have been given to Layne by his father. It looked subtle and genuine in its sweetness. A sharp contrast to the boy who fed her and Kevin bowls of Crisco under the guise of vanilla ice cream.  
  
The left corner of her mouth cocked up in a half-smirk, almost a twitch more than it was voluntary. She looked at her lap again.  
  
"Well you need a vegetable, too," Keith chided. "Grilled asparagus for the boy. But no garlic, please. Allergies."  
  
A discordant pounding heart blocked any decipherable noise. Carrie's lip curled up, her thumbs twitching and gnashing at the nails on each hand. The same courtesy had not been extended months earlier when he made her play doctor. The pressure cuff blotted her upper arm with hives as though the stars had been sprayed with blood. There was no alleviation until Mom got home three hours later, stuffing her with antihistamines and slathering her arm with calamine cream. Apparently the cuff was laced with latex.  
  
She didn't realize her hand was traveling up to cradle the appendage until her eyes opened again at the skin on skin contact. She startled herself.  
  
"Why did you get wine?" Keith was asking. Her eyelid twitched, her brow spasming as her father's sometimes did.  
  
 _"Relax,_ it's alcohol-removed," Mom was scoffing.  
  
"Well, I'm just looking out for my son." The youngest living one was still bouncing in his lap, folding at the cloth napkin. Keith's eyes were iced over, blue as a gas flame, burning out under a surely piercing look from Mom.  
  
"I know my body and my baby better than you, Mr. Robbins. I thank you for the consideration, but this baby's ready to tend bar."  
  
 _Out, out, out, out, out --  
_  
She pawed at Mom's arm, pathetic, gentile, beckoning her closer.  
  
"I need the bathroom," she whispered. A half-lie. She needed _a_ room, not specifically the _bathroom._  
  
"Well, go ask a waiter, baby," she shooed, flicking her hand out. "You're a big girl, you don't need me to ask people for you. Isn't that the butler right there?"  
  
An anchor weight lifted, surging life from her heart down to her little toes. The Englishman was pacing leisurely up and down the makeshift aisles of tables, stopping every few moments to chat with a guest.  
  
"Go ask him, baby, he won't bite."  
  
Carrie got up from her seat, her walk dead-set but unsuspecting. Several ambrosial smells drifted past her at once, rumbling her tummy, stuffed only with a miserable roll. Some other children, much younger than eight, laughed and shrieked and made messes of their table cloths. Carrie wouldn't have jumped had she been of more sound body.  
  
Tentatively, sucking in a breath, she tugged on the cuff of the Englishman's left sleeve. He looked down at her, a look of fleeting, somewhat warm recognition stretching the beard that forested his face.  
"I believe you would like your coat back?" he asked. _Bathroom, bathroom--  
_  
She nodded anyway.  
  
"If you'll follow me, Ma'am."  
  
As she trailed behind him, her lithe legs doubling his strides to catch up as they descended the stairs, she felt something warm in her chest, like a red hot fire poker. Nobody at _any_ of these parties had ever called her _Ma'am._ She was only ever Missy when she was in trouble with her parents.  
  
It looked to still be light outside, though shadows were beginning to blanket over the asphalt, signaling a deep dusk on the horizon.  
  
"A butterfly, was that correct, Ma'am?"  
  
Another nod. A smile curled into her face as she was handed the dirty denim, the pink threads a lapel of honor against her left collarbone. Just as he started to stride past her --  
  
"Do you know where the bathroom is, sir?"  
  
Her throat was scratchy from its lack of commission for the past twenty minutes. The strong inflections surprised even herself.  
  
Beyond the stairs, the Englishman led her through a scarlet-splashed hallway. Oil-canvassed paintings of centuries-old monarchs in over-puffed clothing grappled for her attention as she attempted to keep up with his pace. So out of focus she was, she didn't see the omcoming collision until the wind knocked her ribs inward, nearly staggering off her feet. The only save she had from a plunge to the cool earth was the hand that wrapped around her arm, steadying her feet.  
  
This man was lightning quick.  
  
"Bruce, your mother's been looking up and down for you. Return to your seat before she starts scaling the building."  
  
Carrie looked up. The supposed Bruce was of a much taller height than her not even four-foot form. He reminded her strikingly of Layne, but with a more well-rounded face, darker eyes. He had a smart tux in lieu of a blue vest and collar.  
  
"Is my dad gonna speak soon, Alfred?"  
  
"Yes, Bruce, and your parents ordered your plate for you. The foundation's heads will be speaking before your father but it would not look well for you to shirk them. Go."  
  
Those blotted moss-colored pools cast down to Carrie for only a moment, and then he was gone.  
  
His glance made her feel silly, looking up at an older boy in such a way. She didn't know very many boys. Even the ones in school didn't bother to speak much to her outside the classroom. Jackson Francis had been the only one. She didn't dare think to bring a boy to either of her parents' houses -- whether she would've liked them or not.  
  
She turned.  
  
"Am I supposed to call you Alfred?" she questioned, a brow pushed down. The man smiled softly, tightly.  
  
"I'd prefer Mr. Pennyworth," he responded.  
  
 _"Pennyworth ..."_ she tested, finding it intriguing. Her mind flashed with her grandmother Penny.  
  
"Would you like me to wait outside the door to lead you back to the dining hall?" he considered, hands folding behind his back.  
  
"No thank you, Mr. Pennyworth," she said, stopping herself short of saying she may be a while. Mom had said something about entendres once, and the spice of the word struck her brain. "I'll figure it out."  
  
"And what name shall I call you by, Ma'am, in case there are more requests through the evening? Miss Robbins?"  
  
A surge shot through her, rippling at the hands. She tried her best to hide it.  
  
 _"No,_ not that. My name is Carrie," she stated, pushing the great wooden door marked WOMEN. "Carrie Fleck."  
  
The door slowly swung to a close before she ever caught on to the subtle shifting of his eyes, the gentle upturn of his mouth magnetized downward.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The interior wall of the stalls in the bathroom were hexagonal, as opposed to the soft triangular patterns she saw near the sink. Carrie found this curious.  
  
However long she was on the floor in the corner stall, she did not know. Her behind had gone numb some time ago, the pad of her pointer finger a bashful pink where she ran it through the rough granite edges.  
  
More than once, she'd pulled out the letter from Nana, addressed to **MR. THOMAS WAYNE.** The nagging curiosity egged her to open it. Familial loyalty stopped her short of running the pad of her thumb against the paper fold.  
  
She rested the letter on the inside of her jacket pocket. In her multiple pacing strides through the small vinicty, she'd stood on a gold trash can lid to survey the damage of the envelope pressed to her underarm, wincing at the sight of a furious stripe along the length of her left armpit.  
  
She could hear the speeches and applause through a vent, muffled still as though her head was as stuffed as when she sat at the table. The clacking of heels on marble outside the door alerted her to retreat to her cubby when she needed to. The bubbling of oceanic blood pounding at the base of her skull had flushed away as Keith's voice ebbed out of her tight, protective bubble. Alfred the butler, with his aura of kindness and cool, gave Carrie the essence of her being a shadow when she'd followed him around.  
  
Keith could see shadows. The eerie luminescence of his eyes on her every so often was the most seen she had ever felt. Outside the protection of her father's hands, Carrie could run blindly into the streets and nobody would think twice.  
  
Keith was a car on the run, his growl bassy and obscene, the coffee stains of his teeth suspending her in paralyzed headlights.  
  
The shriek of her little Mary Jane shoe against the bottom of the porcelain bowl was squeaky, jarring. She pressed a palm to the floor, shrouding her further in the shadows. Shrouded in the concealed area that wasn't assaulted by the magnificent lamplight, her dress was more attuned to honey than gold.  
  
Her caked lashes were crusty against the hot twinge of her cheeks. Pressing her back against the wall, too tired to look anymore at the disorienting black and white blocks of the floor, her head circled and circled some more with the vague recollections of the music from the show Mom took her to see ages ago.  
  
 ** _And in that darkness when I'm blind with what I can't forget,_**  
 ** _It's always morning in my mind, my little lamb, my pet, Johanna  
_**  
Mom had gotten her the soundtrack on vinyl after they saw the show. Many an evening had been spent laying across her father's lap like their fat orange house cat, reveling in the music -- or trying to get him to. A lack of a ticket for the actual show meant she had to give him the next best thing.  
  
He claimed to not much enjoy it -- perhaps her constant chirping about human flesh pies hadn't helped her case at dinner -- but at least twice she'd heard him humming a tune or another when they did dishes. He seemed to like the one about the pretty women.  
  
The back of her skull sharpened the sensitive nerves as a blonde mesh made contact with the wall. It wasn't in the same fashion that Daddy was used to doing, but she was thoroughly spent. She --  
  
 _ **"Carrie Frances!"  
**_  
She sat upright, her palm assaulting the floor. The thunder crash of her heart _pulled_ her upright. Clean, sanitized air burned her eyes down to the whites, widened as they were as her back scaled the wall. The bullets of her mother's heels ripped through the stall door's quasi-protection, in blind pursuit of hurting her.  
  
"Carrie Frances, get your ass back to that dinner, _now."  
_  
Slowly, so as to make herself deadened and imperceptible, Carrie peeled herself from the wall, thankful for the denim that layered the tacky sweat of her skin. To see her mom through the slivers of light in the stall would be to see Medusa and render her to stone.  
  
She looked down at her shoes, inky black, a gaping maw in the equally dark tile of the floor.  
  
"Do you know ..." There was anger. She could hear the quake of it. "... how _long_ you've been gone? I was about to tear the damn place apart looking for you! Forty-five _minutes,_ Carrie? _Really?"_  
  
Her chin pruned. Her lips curled in to bite the bottom one, scraping away the chocolate balm. Crying didn't have the same effect on her mother as it did on her father. The clicking of the stall's lock and the creak of the door was an eerie echo in a room that felt to have risen ten degrees.  
  
The hands-on-hips posture broke as soon as she was in full sight. Five acrylic talons took aim for the back of her neck, securing her in place with the pads of Mom's fingers as though Carrie was a naughty cat, claimed by the scruff. No wincing or huffing alleviated the pressure that pulled her forward with her mother. She only broke away when they got to the sinks.  
  
"Wash your hands," Mom instructed. "Be quick with it."  
  
Submerging her hands in a bucket of ice water would've been less painful. Having to stand on the gold trash can lid to reach the sink gave her a trickle of anxiety about the odds of it being kicked out from under her, executioner style like she saw in those old westerns at Daddy's house. She kept her face leveled and controlled, even at the biting, "I expect this kind of behavior from your anxious fucking _father,_ not from my _daughter."_  
  
She ignored this, keeping her eyes on her reddening hands as the blast of chilled water rolled off her skin and was swallowed into the drain. She hoped her mother didn't take note of the strip of pink where the remnants of half of her left eyebrow used to be. Forty-five minutes was not long enough to quell her nervous picking.  
  
The ungloved hand clasped onto the scruff of her jacket rather than her neck. Droplets of water splashed along the lower wall and floor tiles as Mom pulled her from the bathroom by force. Whether her bull-like breathing was from the physical exertion or her sheer anger, Carrie wasn't going to ask to find out.  
  
Slow but mounting, the ambient senses continued their assault on her as before. The cud that was her bread roll sat heavy in her stomach, alerting her to the dull ache in her gut as the other rich foods wafted at her in an onslaught of nausea. The clinks and clatters of plates was as jarring as if they pressed the prongs of their forks into her shaking arms. She was dizzied by the bright lights.  
  
Mom released her jacket only once they reached the table, taking the seat to the left for herself. Carrie stood dumbly for a second, her eyes steeled in on the back of the black suit jacket right in front of her. When she followed the canvassed layers upward, disappointment eroded the linings of her stomach when she found coiffed brown hair.  
  
Mom didn't actually _expect_ her to --  
  
"Sit down," Mom said simply, the command turned into dog-like obedience with the snap of her fingers.  
  
The rack of lambs on her plate could not have looked less appetizing when she got situated in her chair. Her shoulders flared in her jacket, hunched to ready herself for defense. To her right, Keith cut into his filet with an almost offensive casualty. Both of the boys stared at her curiously, their plates already emptied.  
  
The lambs tasted like they'd been oiled with dish soap. Her jaws were slower to chew, the taste barely registering. Her gaze once again fell on the table cloth and at once fell into nothing.  
  
There was no clock to tell her it was soon ready to leave.  
  
"You boys pick out what you want from the desserts, okay?" Mom was saying, well above Carrie's head and thousands of paces away, but she still heard it. "Since you were good and ate your dinner."  
  
She didn't have to look up to know a derisive glance was thrown in her direction. The lamb in her fingers was as heavy as a boulder bearing down on a chain through her fingers.  
  
"She's just being a grump." Carrie's shoulders jutted out in shock, the whisper low and whistly. Her jaw trembled. "I can get you dessert if you want."  
  
Slowly, she looked up, her gaze locking on a rivaling blue. Tightening her lip, the tip of her tongue crushed between her little teeth, she pierced him with the same question she'd asked her father when he took her to the toy store the Thursday earlier -- _what do I need to do?  
_  
He looked at the menu, a crooked smile turning his face abstract.  
  
"Help me pick out something that sounds good and we'll call it even."  
  
"You're not really getting her dessert, are you?" Mom drawled.  
  
"Jossy, she's a kid -- let her have dessert if she wants if the boys are getting something."  
  
Unassuming to the noise, her finger landed on the words _TOFFEE APPLE PIE.  
_  
"What a choice," Keith commented, the acrid warm breath stinging her ear. "Now you can pick for yourself."  
  
Her attention innately skipped over the option of chocolate truffles. The troubling eel in her belly married it to her mind anyway.  
  
She leaned to her left, diligent still. Her mother looked to have tempered herself.  
  
"Mom, what's a chocolate mouse?"  
  
Mom turned, a brow quirking up.  
  
"A what?"  
  
"See there, it says 'chocolate mouse,' under the lemon tart."  
  
There was a blanched laugh, breathy and quaking her mom's shoulders.  
  
"That's _mousse,"_ Mom corrected. "It's like cakey pudding."  
  
A figure cast a great ashy shadow over the table, partially covering Kevin. All the table's occupants looked up to the occupied space between Mom and Layne. Carrie's eyes gleamed.  
  
"Thank you all for coming by tonight to support our cause. Nearly three-thousand dollars tonight, and that's not counting my donations," Thomas Wayne said, his smile thin. A great bear's paw that was his hand took Mom's own with such fragility. "I hope you've been able to enjoy yourselves."  
  
His hand passed over Carrie, reaching over to shake Keith's hand, before he moved to straighten himself.  
  
Carrie frantically pawed at the interior of her jacket.  
  
"Mr. Wayne!" she hastened, too quick out of her seat for Mom to think to stop her.  
  
The man was beginning to turn, but stopped at Carrie's call. In her hands, the letter started to shake. Despite his genial demeanor as he looked down at her, she had to crane her neck to match his eye. Her 3' 11" stature put her at the level of his stomach.  
  
"My nana asked me to give this to you," she declared, holding the letter out. When he took it from her, the anxious snare of her ribs lessened.  
  
"I'll ... be sure to get back to her," he said, inspecting the front's intricate scrawl. Turning back to the table as Carrie moved to return to her seat, he continued, "Charming girl. Pretty."  
  
"Sure is."  
  
Not even fully in the chair, a gentle clap of the shoulder, Keith's thumb on her neck, seared her. It crushed the wind from her lungs, her ribs decaying.  
  
Just as soon as she moved to sit, she took off again, as fast as her spindly legs could carry her. The touch followed her like a blot of phantom's black soot down her neck -- cold and grotesque and obscene. A stripe of heat marred her, bringing red rims to her glassy eyes.  
  
The cannon blast of the stall door broke her reverie. Shaky, snotty breaths ricocheted from her chest, her tears falling free as she honed in on a wooden wall and nothing else. Her head bore into the wooden stall, the apex of her forehead firm and unmoving. Tears alternately prodded through the bushel of mascara on her lashes, smearing her lower lids, or dripped and cracked on the tiles.  
Sometimes her father slammed his head against the nearest wall that was available. She remembered, but she refrained.  
  
Outside the door was a crescendo of high heels on polished marble. The creak of the door's opening was not near as jarring as it had been minutes earlier. The ominous rhythm made a beeline for her stall, then halted after a slight huff.  
  
For a moment, it was silent. Neither occupant tried to look at the other through the little space available. The bloat of Mom's Navy blue belly was the only part of her that Carrie could see through the haze of splotchy black tears.  
  
"Carrie, c'mon," Mom said, unnaturally cool. "We can -- we can go if you want."  
  
Her eyes traveled up, trying to find more of her mother through the slat. Her chest was painfully tight, both inside and due to the dress' constriction. She needed to throw it out and burn it.  
"We should go home," Mom tried again. Not a demand nor a suggestion but level fact.  
  
Carrie's shoulders curled inward, her muscles tired of the constant heightening of her anxiety. The spongy part of her frontal lobe pulsed as the heat of tears brightened her face, leaving her vulnerable to the bathroom's AC whirs.  
  
Amid shaky breaths, a drivel of watery snot pervading her upper lip, she unlocked the stall door and creaked it open. The back of a denim sleeve was scratchy against the space between her nose and upper lip, rubbed pink and raw from the fabric.  
  
The concave curvature of Mom's stomach, dark as a blueberry, protruded to a more oblong shape, caressed with unconcealed antsiness. The hiss of an inward breath was painful even to Carrie, who watched her mother's eyes screw shut. Bucked pearls crushed the peachy gloss of her bottom lip.  
  
"Your brother's gonna kill me one of these days," she announced. "Or you might -- one or the other."  
  
Black death still hung heavy over Carrie's head, dragging her shoulders down as she took cement-foot steps out of the stall.  
  
A blue velvet hand was extended her way.  
  
"Come on -- we're going home," Mom said plainly. "Wash your face and then we'll go home."  
  
It had been such a long time since she had wanted to go home to Mom's house. She obligingly approached the sink.  
  
\- - - -  
  
When she passed out in the car or for how long, Carrie wasn't sure.  
  
From getting in the car, the only thing she remembered was a loiterer in a grotesque plastic clown mass before she succumbed to an agitated rest. A pang of something familiar told her to wrack her brain for remembrance of the odd getup, but she succumbed to fatigue before a conscious thought could catch up to her. Keith flashed through her head, his teeth a phantom's white and smiling at her, and then the car rocked her to sleep.  
  
When she awoke, it was with the seat belt patterned into her cheek and with the warm smell of food. Mom didn't say a word or cast her many glances. Carrie knew better than to try initiating a conversation.  
  
Still in their evening dresses, Carrie and her mother sat at their dining table, the silence eerie and loud all the same. The crinkle of Mom's sandwich wrapper, bloodstained with fat globs of barbecue sauce, made Carrie's oversensitive ears cringe. She tried hard to focus solely on her chicken bits and not her mother's steely, far-off stare directed to the other end of the kitchen.  
  
"I'll help you wash the product out of your hair when you finish eating," Mom said -- the first words in as many disorienting hours since they'd left the dinner.  
  
Carrie nodded slowly. "Why did you get me McNuggets? I like their cheeseburgers."  
  
The arched handles of the circus-printed happy meal box seemed to be almost trying to match Mom with a scrutinizing gaze. She swallowed slowly before commenting.  
  
"Because you're sleeping in my bed, and I know what your little butt is capable of," she said, and Carrie dared to think she was close to smiling, though her eyes were far off still. "You're as bad as your grandpa sometimes."  
  
Her head ducked, bashful and too tired to laugh or make a declaration of protest. The oiled, cheap food quelled the ill-prepared lamb stirring in her belly. The eel that coiled his way around her innards did not stir, but kept dormant.  
  
\- - - -  
  
On the lid of the toilet, a pair of undergarments and the Fleck pseudo-heirloom cowboy pajamas sat folded and freshly cleaned. On the granite counter next to it was Mom's purple spaghetti-strap nightie.  
  
The steaming shower water sprayed Carrie's wriggling toes, assailing her left shoulder where it bounced off her mother's arms. Her back was pressed to the chilled tiles. Mom had taken their makeup off before the shower, but Carrie shied away from the water. It wasn't hot enough, though it brought the bathroom to a stifling steam bath.  
  
 _You burned yourself the other night,_ Mom had commented, upon Carrie's curiosity at the renewed co-showering. Mom had put a stop to it years ago. **_Don't want your dad griping at me that you're all pink and burned from a shower._**  
  
Wafts of steam colored her face with bright pink. Mom had given her a once-over, made a _"Hmph"_ noise at the discolored bruises aligning Carrie's person, and her face burned a darker red with a shame hotter than a lava core.  
  
"C'mere, let me wash your hair."  
  
Hesitating, Carrie crossed over with a single half-step, turning her attention from the peculiarity that was her mother's belly. The buoyancy of Mom's hair had become diminished under the power of Farrah Fawcett's creme rinse. The suds that had flattened the curls down to desperately crunched strings now seemed to be _avoiding_ the bump of her mother's navel, rather than _caving into_ it. As of late, it started to protrude out  
  
A full attack of hot water on the apex of her scalp forced Carrie's eyes closed. Unprepared, her right hand jerked out, finding her mother's knee. One hand, tender to the point of unbearable, brushed her hair back, rolling the unappreciated product with it. She could feel the strange texture rolling down her arms. It swarmed her feet in the cocktail of bath water and suds.  
  
"Your brother's trying to do back flips in there."  
  
Her eyes, having fluttered closed at the soothing raking of nails on her scalp, opened again, her head whirling to land on the brother of interest. She turned slightly. Splayed fingers bowled defensively over an oblong mass that, to Carrie's saucer-eyed bewilderment, rippled to the adjacent left side of the protruding stomach. The 'W' pattern on the right side of Mom's stomach had been stretched to its limit, nearly remolding the five freckles into a straight and narrow line.  
  
Testily, the pads of four small fingers brushed up against the bump-over-a-bump. A larger, more finely-manicured thumb skimmed her wrist.  
  
"Did I do that?" she questioned, afraid of the answer. "Before I was born?"  
  
"No, you only ever kicked," Mom said, a huff finalizing the movements that looked to have receded. She continued the motion of stroking Carrie's hair back, preventing the assault of soap in her eyes.  
  
"And really only ever when your dad was around. It was freaky -- like you _knew_ he was there, even if he didn't say much. I had to _beg_ him to shut up so you wouldn't tear through my stomach."  
  
Her mounting interest faltered. A dark feeling eroded the hotness of the shower, searing the lining of her stomach with a harder tugging pain that stung her bright pink face.  
  
"Can we ..." She cleared her throat, needing a steadier breath. "Can you try calling Daddy again before bed?"  
  
There was a sigh. It was less annoying than she might have expected, but it was a sigh nonetheless.  
  
"I'll try, but I don't want him giving me lip if we wake up your nana."  
  
Carrie nodded. Inwardly she was relieved to have gotten the letter to Thomas Wayne.  
  
"You know why you're shorter than the other kids your age?"  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"It's 'cause you popped out two weeks early," Mom informed her, taking a smatter of body wash for herself before passing the bottle to Carrie. "When your _actual_ due date was two weeks early _already,_ because I got so big."  
  
There was a sardonic smile in this knowledge that Carrie could not reciprocate. She stepped away from the jet stream of water as she slathered her arms in beaded pink wash.  
  
"The doctors said if I'd carried you to my actual due date, you could've been _ten pounds."_  
  
The worst day of my life had ricocheted on and off through her brain in random patterns throughout the night. She did not want to bode on another reminder of how much _easier_ this baby was than herself.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The call went unanswered when they were freshly out of the shower.  
  
The call after that was left unreciprocated as well, even when Carrie double and _triple_ -checked her mother's address book to make sure the numbers were right. She knew 8J's phone number by heart. That it was the first in the list of emergency contacts for her school nurses every year made it hard to forget.  
  
Carrie took slow, steadying breaths. Her legs hung lamely and draped across her folded lap like two gym weights. Even with Mom bustling in and out, the front of her nightie hanging higher than the back, and even with the record player lilting between the harmonious and discordant ravings of a crazed barber and his pie-making accomplice, Carrie felt totally, brutally alone.  
  
Her cowboy pajamas lost their homely musk, devoid of the scents of moth balls and her father's old childhood clothes she found in a box in his room. Now it smelled like lemons, cheap detergent, and the tears that ran in symmetry down her cheeks and stained her left thigh through the thermal bottoms.  
  
Mom walked into the room again, her hair billowy from the blow dryer she'd used on them. Her jaunty whistle in tandem with the music was so oddly out of place with the dullness of her eyes and Carrie's tear-marked frown.  
  
"Alright, time for bed," she announced, giving Carrie a moment to wipe the tears clean off once her back was turned. "Did you brush your teeth? Good girl."  
  
The slid under the hefty quilt, engulfed by the little patchwork girls and their flower baskets. An arm pulled Carrie close, serpentine, putting her at an odd angle of arching her back to cave into her mother completely. A kiss was placed upon the back crown of her head, substituting for the nails that raked her hair back with winsome care.  
  
Carrie breathed slowly, a swallow of tears as thick and painful as cough medicine. A watery glob dripped down the arch of her nose, combing through the lashes of her right eye.  
  
Instinctively she knew the hand that rubbed soothingly and innocuously over the clothed knobs of her spine were her mother's. But she could _feel his eyes bearing into_ her own. And she _hurt_ from it.  
  
"I ... shouldn't have pushed you so far today," Mom said into the cherry scent of her hair, replacing it with the pressure of her chin. "I know you don't like him."  
  
The harp on the record player was almost obscene in its sweetness. Angry heat flushed all the way to Carrie's neck as she tried to stifle an audible cry that left her vision useless.  
  
She wondered if Keith would've hated Carrie _Robbins_ as much as he hated Carrie _Fleck.  
_  
Mom's hand rested finally on the sheet in front of her constricting belly. Her elbow stayed on Carrie's ribs. There was no way she didn't feel them shaking.  
  
"What's _wrong,_ Carrie?"  
  
Mom was Mom again, tired in her tone. The pad of an adult thumb wiped the tear from the low of her eyelid, but it did not soothe.  
  
"Would --" A hiccuping squeak, unquestionably loud and painful to listen to. "W -- Would you like me more if ... if _Keith_ w -- was my dad?"  
  
"Oh, my god, _Carrie."_ She winced, admonishing herself for not keeping it to herself. "You _cannot_ be serious."  
  
At this, she turned. Mom met her with an incredulous gaze, her head propped up on one hand, blocking the slivers of moon from hitting Carrie's bloodshot eyes. There was a werewolf in her mother's gaze, snarling at the infraction.  
  
"What do you mean?" Mom balked. "How are you asking that?"  
  
"At the ..." There was a stone lump in her throat, seizing her chest as she attempted to get it down. "... the -- my name plate said _Robbins --"_  
  
"Oh, _god,_ Carrie," Mom sighed, a hand coming to rest on her own forehead. "... I made those reservations after I got into it with your dad. It was impulsive. _No,_ I don't wish you were anybody else's kid. You are your father's daughter for a _reason_ \-- _even if_ you were a surprise, you're still here."  
  
The quilt was curled into her chin, her face displaying disbelief. Too many times in four years she'd heard how the Fleck qualities in her could be so _'_ _annoying.'  
_  
"It doesn't matter _who_ your father is," she continued. "However much I do or don't like you sometimes has no bearing on how much I love you. _I love you_ more than you could start to comprehend -- end of discussion."  
  
The hand that cupped her cheek may as well have scratched her bloody before her mother turned over to her left side, struggling a little more as of late.  
  
The refrains of two men crooning for pretty women danced less like a harmonious chain above their heads and more like a flushing toilet.  
  
\- - - -  
  
 _Arthur Fleck was twenty-seven years old, and he was in ecstasy.  
_  
 _A siren song quavered, encouraging the ardent sucking of that sweet pulse in her neck. Streamlets of pulsating life drew under his tongue as he drove forward. The rutting of his hips was growing more slovenly, more uneven.  
_  
 _Sweat drew down from one brow to the other as Joss whined beneath him, the rush of blood in his ears and his wife's quickening gasps and the jovial radio pulsed a symphony in his ears that told him **I'm alive, I'm alive, I feel alive.**  
_  
 _"God, Joss ..." he rasped, the scraping of adoring nails through his damp curls and the tremble of her legs forcing his speed further, no matter the cramps in his thighs. "Joss, I'm -- I'm gonna c--"  
_  
 _"Please! Oh god, **please, Arthur!"** she keened, as high a mewl as he gave back.  
_  
 _The suction of his lips on her neck continued, making him delirious with enjoyment where he saw the red markings of his own doing, the dribble of drool that kept them connected.  
_  
 _The suckling broke off into a gasp, his hips running slower but deeper plunges. Electric current ran hot and steady through his brain, buzzing in his chest. When he stopped, it was as he and Joss breathed heavily and groggily into one another, their lips wet and puffed. Foreheads tacked with sweat pressed together, her hand threading the loose curls on the back of his neck, his own hand thumbing the stiff, masticated peak of her left breast in unhurried circles.  
_  
 _"Joss ... oh, god," he breathed, slowly pulling out, whimpering at the sensation of her walls enticing him to stay. "Joss, I -- I think the condom broke ... I **know** it broke."  
_  
 _His lids shielded his eyes from the nod of her head, though he felt it against his own. Her nose nuzzled his own. A dainty foot dragged against the back of his upper thigh.  
_  
 _"Might've been my bad -- I think it snagged my teeth," she laughed, her breaths heady with their earlier breakfast. "Why did you flip me over?"  
_  
 _"You were too damn slow." He pecked at her jaw, his inclinations much more innocent than moments earlier, dragging his lips up to the apple of her smiling cheekbone.  
_  
 _Awareness to his surroundings brought his attention more to the radio several paces behind them. Roy Orbison's drum beat furrowed Arthur's brow, as familiar as it was perplexing. Though time evaded him during sex, four songs had come and gone in the time being -- Pretty Woman started and ended it. Strange to play the same song twice in the same hour.  
_  
 _His hand traveled lower, palming her curved ass, pulling her closer to him.  
_  
 _"God, I love you," he stated. Two sweet hands pressed to his face, brushing his curls back as she smiled broadly and adoringly up at him. A bead of sweat rode the bridge of his nose. A trickle of her own sweat pooled in the apex of her sternum.  
_  
 _"Happy birthday, Mr. Fleck."_


	25. The Moon and New York City

It was Monday morning, and Carrie Fleck woke up to a contented mind in her old bedroom.  
  
The indigo comforter was old satin, pasting her head to the sweat-stained pillow, but it smelled like her father's cigarettes and Nana's perfumes nonetheless. Though she'd begun to admonish the habit, she wouldn't object to the smell of home. Frankie, who had been cast away to Daddy's house to avoid Mom's ranting of the baby needing him more than Carrie herself, had been treated to a dish soap bath in the sink while she took a shower the night earlier. The smell was entrancing, and she clutched him for forgiveness of her week-long absence.  
  
She turned onto her back, alleviating the pressure of her right shoulder. Her interested gaze followed from the old woman's hand on the sheet shared between them, to the jagged crack in the ceiling, bringing her back to the lightning bolt from last night's warring thunderstorms. She'd stayed glued to the window behind the couch, capturing her own wide-eyed reflection as if the lightning strikes were great camera flashes, yearning to disorient.  
  
Limbs popped and groaned in protest against her snaking out of bed, trying to not wake her grandmother. She straightened her pajamas where they'd meshed and twisted in her sleep. Craning her head from side to side relieved stiff aches in her neck with funny pops. The fluidity of her movements was far removed from the previous Friday morning. The dream she had now was so pleasantly ordinary, she scarcely remembered it. It had been a long time since she had a dream so natural.   
  
Thick streaks of bright lights poured into the apartment, taking aim at the back of the couch. Carrie's fingers ran across the warmed material and its sturdy wooden base hidden beneath as she circled it like a vulture and padded to the kitchen. A quick glance over the couch saw that her father was asleep, his hair splayed wildly over his pillow. A few finger knuckles on his right hand skimmed the floor. Last night had been an especially bad laughing episode after a fairly pleasant evening. The ambiance that lulled her to sleep was a cocktail of thunder strikes, muffled shrieks of laughter, and an adjacent neighbor pounding the wall and demanding quiet. The silence greeting her as she awoke was as cool as water.  
  
Frankie was haphazardly sprawled out over the counter, his left foot angled against the telephone cord. Ambling for the wooden stool, Carrie pulled herself to her knees on the cracked linoleum, mindful of her slumbering father and his readiness to chide her for such actions.  
  
The countertop without cabinets became trickier to maneuver around since Carrie hit her growth spurt last Christmas. The support groaned under her weight in a way that made her wary of it. Now she was prone to taking strides from the supported countertop to the stove, hoping the burners hadn't been used that particular morning.  
  
Successful, but quiet still, Carrie stealthily snatched two boxes of cereal from behind Nana's old glass vase from the top of the fridge. Climbing off was a game of avoiding the stove dials, otherwise her hair would go _whoosh._  
  
She acquired three bowls and spoons from the other cabinet and drawer with the aid of the foot stool, and the glass bottle of milk hidden behind last night's leftovers (tuna and veggie salad, _eugh)._ With Frankie perched upright now as her witness, she managed to make a bowl of shredded wheats for herself and cornflakes for the sleeping adults. A quick glance at the clock told her it was 9:12 -- ample time for waking up and cartoons.  
  
One bowl was taken to the living room, placed next to the stack of money that Mom had given to him at yesterday evening's trade-off. She pretended not to notice him counting and re-counting it during their movie last night, though she hadn't the faintest idea of what he was obsessing over it for. It was only $200.  
  
As soon as she'd managed to open the other bedroom door, Auggie barrelled past her feet, nipping tactlessly at one ankle. Hissing back at him in response, Carrie ambled in to set the bowl of cornflakes on her grandmother's dresser, pushing the phone out of the way.  
  
A weathered, blotted hand found its way to her own, and then sheltered in the fringes of her frizzy hair. Her nostrils were singed with the smell of minty pomenade that clung to her nana's clothes.  
  
"Carrie ..." Nana cracked, fogged with barely-threaded alertness.  
  
"Morning, Nana," she replied quietly, wrapping her hand gently around the old thumb to take the interest from her hair. Their hands rested jointly over the edge of the bed.  
  
"Carrie ... did Thomas Wayne get my letter?"  
  
"Mm-hmm," she nodded.  
  
"What did he say? Did he know who was writing him?"  
  
"He said he'd write back soon."  
  
The same question had been asked last night, along with --  
  
"Was he handsome?" There was a gentile smile that burned Carrie at the tips of her ears, a bashful smile involuntarily tugging at her lips, though the warmth did not extend to her heart at the question.  
  
A shrug of the shoulders accompanied, "I guess so."  
  
She didn't enjoy the boy talks. Fortunately they were few and far between with her mother and grandmothers, but they often made her feel awkward and a little dizzy by the end. She didn't know what the basis was that she was supposed to find boys, or _men,_ to be handsome. Her daddy was handsome, she supposed, but in the same vein that she believed Heather found _her_ father to be handsome.  
  
"I made you breakfast," she said, remembering her own cereal in the living room. "D'you want me to get your medicine?"  
  
The hand returned to her hair, matting it to her cheek.  
  
"That's what your father is for, dear."  
  
\- - - -  
  
A weathered VHS tape had to suffice for the lack of cartoons, she supposed. No courtesy was ever extended to children engaged in summers at home. Boring syndicate programming presiding over a child's breakfast should be illegal.  
  
Usually her attention was nigh-drawn from her morning movie if she was contented to a bowl of cereal on her belly, her legs cast over the brown armrest of the vacant chair. But today the other point of interest that coincided with Cinderella's silver ballgown on their TV (it reminded her of her mother's velvet navy; her heart murmured) was the gradual peeling of her father's blanket with the odd breathy snore every few minutes. From the movie's opening to Cinderella finding her Prince Charming, the blanket went from cocooning him at the chin to rumpled just under his bone-heavy chest. The bowl of cornflakes crackled with wait.  
  
A high whistle of a whine caught her attention, a merger with the drivel of milk down her chin from her last spoonful of cereal. Arching herself back to upend her attention, baring her ears where the hair splayed in the open air, Carrie saw her father's eyes peel open, one at a time, the bushels of his eyebrows pushed down to shield off the morning's natural lights.  
  
"Timeizzit?" he rasped, bassy and grounding in an eye with his palm.  
  
"Almost ten-thirty," she reported. Prideful, she added, "I made breakfast for you and Nana."  
  
An eye squinched as he sat up, limbs curling on limbs. His top lip sneered tiredly, thinning the years-old scar to a taut scratch -- a mar of pink skin between the stubble he needed to shave.  
  
An inspection through the bowl with his respective spoon betrayed the flimsiness from the bath of milk and separated sugar -- a neat and tidy mountain of which gathered upon the spoon's edge.  
  
Carrie took a heavy sigh into her chest, releasing it slowly to not convey her disappointment. His face indicated a Done Day. It was harder to coax him out when he woke up in such a mood.  
  
The hand ruffling her hair nonetheless as he moved to pass the coffee table made her smile inwardly.  
  
Her foot twirled as she finished her breakfast and her movie in relative quiet.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Daddy, what's ..." Daddy tugged her hand, veering them further out of the way of fast-tracked cars. _"... iron vitamins?"_  
  
"Your mom said you're not getting enough iron. Said you were all bruised up in the shower, 'cause your diet's been poor," he said, gruff but clear. "They're supposed to not make you so easily bruised."  
  
A sharp heat crawled the length of Carrie's neck, caressing her tightened jaw bone. She swallowed her saliva as her teeth bore down on each other.  
  
"Mom said I bruise like a banana," she reported, attempting to deflect.  
  
"Mm."  
  
She sighed gently. Whatever the dream or the trigger from the previous evening, it was lodged into his head quite tightly, in the areas Carrie's charm could not reach.  
  
"Are we going to see Sophie at the bank?" she questioned, craning her head to him.  
  
"Carrie --"  
  
"Can we count our Colorado money if we go?"  
  
"Carrie, please be _quiet."_  
  
Her mouth pinched, inclined to the left, framing the skin of the right side of her jaw to be tight. Between him and her mother, the oft-sung refrain of her given names began to sound like a ticking bomb of a threat. He'd spoken of Colorado less than usual as of late.  
  
Gravel crunched under their shoes in uneven patterns. Not even the soft cossetting of her thumb against the mottled contour of skin between his thumb and index finger turned his quiet mood.  
  
"Why did you put peas on the list? You know I don't like peas, Daddy."  
  
There was a slow sigh, the curvature of his chest expanding quite heavily in her gaze.  
  
"They aren't for you, Carrie, they're for me."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because."  
  
"Are they for if you get beat up again at work?"  
  
She looked up at him again upon asking. He hadn't gone to work all of their last week, nor today.  
  
The inward curve of his bottom lip, gnashed between untidy teeth, and the bashful look he cast made her feel a little admonished in herself.  
  
Alabaster rocks beneath her feet reached beyond their horizon and melded into the old white brick buildings, well predating both their combined years, and brush stroked into the dusty sepia of Gotham's sky.  
  
Sepia conjured pictures of Oz. She winced internally. Practice for the winter show was on her summer schedule. Running lines and listening to her music necessitated the use of Daddy's tape deck -- which meant she'd need to ask him to set it up in their room. She'd hoped to wade around him until it was time for Murray Franklin later that evening. Liza Minnelli was headlining and she didn't intend to miss it with him.  
  
The sunny bauble of her ginger-colored beanie bounced in tandem with their walk. Echoing through her head was the determined counting of how many beats it took for them to reach the bank. Two-hundred and forty-nine paces was interrupted by the tender squeeze of her hand, engulfed in his, as they dodged a few taxis. Her hand slipped out of his to grasp onto his ring and pinky fingers.  
  
Sophie was at work, but busy with another client, although she reciprocated Carrie's wave from two lines over. Out of Daddy's gaze, Carrie swiped a lemon sucker from the inviting bowl, intent on hiding it in her jean pocket until they got home.  
  
A tidy sum of $230 was taken from the mysterious account, though she held her tongue on asking any more questions pertaining to it.  
  
It weighed on her mind like a mossy stone why her father always looked so sullen every time he procured money from his own bank account.  
  
\- - - -  
  
"Here."  
  
A plastic shopping basket and a crumpled, half-folded yellow sheet of notebook replaced the warmth of her father's hand.  
  
"You can practice your math and reading," he said, quiet still. A discordant hum of the flickering shadowed fluorescent above them fought for her attention. "Pick out the stuff on the list 'til you get to ten dollars."  
  
"I hate math," she said simply, scanning her eyes across the little bodega for anything that resembled soup cans or bars of soap.  
  
"Still gotta deal with things -- even if you hate them sometimes," Daddy said.  
  
A phantom pain braced her left collarbone, and then it was gone, leaving only the remnants of trembling breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.  
  
One foot at a time alleviated the lead-heaviness of her tired heels. She volleyed her attention between the scribbles of ink splotches on the page and the required rows upon rows of grape nut cereal. It weighed considerably in the basket, and her left arm felt leveled down like a pair of scales. _A dollar fifty,_ she mantra'd mentally.  
  
She tried not to veer her watchful eye to her father, his posture hunched, nearly towering over the young girl working the pharmacy caddy. There was the shuffling and folding of papers, then she turned back to the shelves, keeping her interst at a minimum under Daddy's turning gaze. She supposed it was just another prescription, though it was curious that he had no bags with him this time as opposed to his usual two -- two bottles for Nana, seven for himself.  
  
A quick, impulsive swipe to pretend to be occupied put a neon bottle of Monster Multiple Vitamins in her grasp.  
  
A pair of arms crossed over each other, hovering over her. Looking up, she saw two mossy eyes as attainable to her reach as the moon. One arm was folded over his journal, tucked away and indenting his right breastplate.  
  
Her lashes batted her cheeks, hoping her feigning sweetness would catch on.  
  
"Almost at two dollars," she reported, pivoting her foot to peruse the next aisle. She pretended not to notice the various wines and beers in the glass fridges and instead went for the written-requested carton of milk. She was bordering on $5.  
  
Milk, multivitamins, cereal, bread, canned tomatoes, and frozen peas wasn't much of a grocery list, but this wasn't much of a grocery _store._ She'd have to ask to go to a proper store the next day, if the Done Day was cleared. Tonight they could make do with spaghetti and canned tomatoes.  
  
At the front register, her fingers inclined delicately over the candy display, the red and white sign above bolded with **PENNY CANDIES**. Her fingers inclined delicately over a brown paper wrapping.  
  
"Daddy, can I get a Hershey Bar?"  
  
She was well aware that the right inflection of his reserved name could get her whatever she wanted. It was only utilized when she most needed it -- such as making off with candy.  
  
"Thought you were gonna blow your dinner on that sucker," he smirked, muffled slightly as his chin tucked into his chest to count out the money. Her eyes bulged. The candy stone sat innocuous and sticky with syrupy heat in her jean pocket.  
  
But she'd been _stealthy!_  
  
"Get a small one," he relented, his smirk evident of an enjoyment in teasing shining through dreary hailstorm clouds. Her reciprocating smile was accentuated with an almond Hershey bar pushed proudly into their meager food pile.  
  
"Love you, Daddy."  
  
Her hand was enveloped in his again, his left arm carrying a large brown bag, as they set out for home. The subtle thrice-squeeze of her hand sufficed in place of words.  
  
\- - - -  
  
The physical embitterment that seemed to emanate through her father whenever they trekked up the stairs always made Carrie feel a little dour to witness. He'd been quiet as to be expected when they hopped the bus back to the apartment, but the malformation of his posture disheartened her. To supplement, she skipped up each set of steps, as though encouraging him to pick up the pace and reach her.  
  
Rarely ever did it work, but she tried anyway.  
  
Everything and nothing flitting through her head slipped by her mouth to push away the unnecessary quiet. Mostly about her need to study the cassette tapes Mrs. Hearst gave everyone for the play, _"at least twice a week,_ she told us, but I have two cassette players at Mom's house so I won't need to borrow yours when I go back there."  
  
The grocery bag was unceremoniously placed into her arms, reaching almost nose-height, as a key was taken out to check the mail. Empty per usual. She stifled her chatter, worrying about Nana asking once again if Thomas Wayne would be writing back. It had only been four days.  
  
 _Three, four, five, **six**_ clicks of the elevator button. She watched his eyes slink down to shield his sight from the blinking fluorescence. A few months ago they only had to push the button four times.  
  
"Wait, wait!" Carrie's attention snapped. Two figures chased the receding opening of the door. _"Wait!"_  
  
Her hand flew out, keeping the opening in place. Sophie and Gigi piled in, hands interlocked, magnetizing Carrie to her father's side. The whir of the elevator and the wearied glance shared between the adults captured her notice.  
  
A jarring rattle of the great metallic box shocked her from the feet upward, shaking the contents of the grocery bag in her arms. Her fingers tightened around the bottom like a pair of talons. The identical one in Sophie's arm trembled as well. Gigi giggled at the unsettling motion.  
  
"This building is so awful, isn't it?" Sophie mused.  
  
She felt a little disgruntled at this, although kept it to herself. Sure, the building had mold in some corners and leaky water sometimes or no water at all during certain hours, and she once got a splinter in her heel from the bedroom floorboards, and certain floors were off limits if she wanted to play with the other kids, but it was home to them. _Mom_ didn't have neighbors or other kids to play with unless it was a Layne and Kevin weekend. A few times a month things could get _really_ interesting and she could make wagers in her mind as to whether the police sirens were coming for the neighbors or another complex.  
  
"This building is so awful, right, Mommy?" Gigi parroted. _"Sooo_ awful."  
  
"Yes, we can hear you, Gigi."  
  
Sophie's free hand slipped out from her daughter's and took aim at her own temple, bending her finger as if to motion what Carrie thought was a gun symbol. Her brow furrowed tenfold at the smirk that crept upon her father's face. One of those weird adult in-jokes, she supposed. She and Heather got in trouble a few months ago for making the same symbols at recess in a heated game of cops and robbers.  
  
The door veered open. Daddy grabbed her hand as Sophie passed them by with a "G'night," Gigi trailing behind her with a continual, "This building is _so_ awful, right, Mommy?"  
  
Carrie followed behind her father, honed in on old Mr. Landau's infant grandson having another crying fit. Her arm was growing tired of the groceries and she was itching to reach their apartment. She didn't know how Daddy was able to carry it for blocks. Her daddy was strong.  
  
"Hey!"  
  
Carrie and Sophie turned, their eyes focusing in on Daddy from both sides. The same finger gun raised to his temple, his head rolling with a blowing sound.  
  
Her lips pursed, little nostrils flaring.  
  
Sophie smiled, barely decipherable, and turned back to her door. Daddy pivoted on his heel and moved to grab Carrie's hand again.  
  
"Was that a grown up joke?" she questioned.  
  
"For mommies and daddies," he clarified, a self-satisfied grin curving into the canyons of his wrinkled mouth.  
  
A blonde brow inclined up. He wasn't always funny.  
  
\- - - -  
  
Nine o'clock saw the Fleck household restored to its rightfully peaceful manner.  
  
Cushioned against her father's lap, Carrie swiped a lemon sucker along her small teeth and enjoyed Ellis Drane's jazz orchestra. Her jaw tightened with the delightful sting of sour sweetness. Comfortable now in her plaid pajama bottoms and a white shirt, she was stuffed to the gills with crackling orchestral tapes and impromptu spaghetti, as she expected.  
  
Her Hershey bar sat with wait in the freezer.  
  
 _"Miss Minnelli, Miss -- can I call you Liza? Mrs. Gero? Garland?"  
_  
 _"Just Minnelli, Murray."  
_  
Her eyes roved up, taking note of the frenetic motions of her father's hand against the paper pressed to his closed journal. The candy stone was pulled out of her mouth as her free hand reached up to tug at the elbow of her father's sleeve.  
  
 _"Daaaddy,_ you're missing the _show,"_ she whined, annoyance unfiltered. Twitching his nose, his eyes rolled down to meet hers.  
  
The journal and its mysterious content was relegated to the side table.  
  
"Sorry," he said gruffly, relaxing his left leg to lower to the ground. After a sniffle, "What are they talking about?"  
  
"Liza Minnelli's in a new movie -- called _Arthur,"_ she responded, amusement tracing the last two syllables as she pulled herself up into a sitting position. "Her and Dudley Moore. We should go see it when it comes out!"  
  
"Maybe," he considered. Even beneath the crunch of her lollipop, she heard nothing else from him, and electric blue eyes threatened to zap the ceiling with her childish frustration.  
  
"Daddy," she started again, the remnants of the candy stone discarded in his ash tray, "... why are you in a bad mood?"  
  
She'd perched herself on his lap, straddling his right knee, rendering him unable to ignore her. Curling her nose in a way that she knew gave him a startling view of himself, Carrie bore her eyes into his own.  
  
Wordlessly, a hand, uncoordinated and brutish but desperate to be tender, raked her bangs back. Some emotion sprung to his eyes without her noticing, a tired smile not curving his lips up, but pushing his face into a thin line with subtle dimples.  
  
There was adoration in his gaze, one that she'd only seen a fleeting glimpse of when he picked her up yesterday. She'd seen it before, palpable and emotional in rare moments of gentle vulnerability. As though she held a vial of euphoria for him beneath the surface of her smile.  
  
"Why were you grumpy today?" she asked again, softer this time, though her hands crossed over her chest to hold her stern demeanor.  
  
"... Sometimes it just happens." His tone was a hot coal of pleading for her understanding, and Carrie saw the crack of sadness that always seemed to threaten him with permanence. A thumb stroked sweetly over the apex of her bangs.  
  
"I saw you only taking half-pills today. Did the doctor tell you to?"  
  
He sighed, the pitiful smile dropping.  
  
"I'll explain it to you tomorrow, okay? We should try to enjoy the show." A pair of arms snaked around her ribs, tangling her chest to his in a way that crushed giggles from her lungs. "It's been _so long_ since we watched it together."  
  
 _"Da-ady!"_ she laughed, the satisfying popping of the knobs in her back betraying his hidden strength.  
  
She had no idea the emotional undertones that her shrieking laughs gave to him; only that he was grinning against her reddened cheek, a series of sloppy kisses pressed there. A pinky finger gently nudged the expanse of her clothed shoulder blade.  
  
The thrum of her heart was wild against her shirt. She wondered if it was beating in his ears as well when she steadying herself against him again, her hands finding his shoulders to anchor herself. Behind them, Murray Franklin's voice drew in a fresh ocean of laughter.  
  
"Can I tell you something?" he asked.  
  
She nodded, always joyously receptive to his secrets. His hands on her ribs drew her in closer. Sneakily he looked around, as though for her ears only -- not even for Auggie or the mice.  
  
"I got a stand up gig next week," he confided. Jaw slacking, Carrie's eyes swelled. The heat of excitement shot from head to splayed toes.  
  
 _"Nuh-uh!"_ she exclaimed, a pawing hand pushing into his vest. His laugh confirmed her allowance of a proud grin. "Your big break! When?"  
  
"Next Thursday," he said. "Well past your bedtime."  
  
"You're gonna let me stay up past _bedtime_ for you _comedy show?"_ she gasped, the information overwhelming her. The expanse of her lungs pushed her ribs out like a balloon, almost painful in her fervor.  
  
The hands on her ribs, as though sensing her ready to burst at the seams, steeped up to her arms. His smile faltered little by little.  
  
"Not quite," he said softly. Swallowing thickly, "I got a friend coming with me."  
  
His eyes darted to avoid the stalling of her matched grin.  
  
"But ... _Daddy --"_  
  
"Carrie ..." he cut in, fingers entwining in her own, squeezing as though to push out the lifelessness in her hand. Her thumb caressed the webspace of his hand out of habit and less affection. "You're gonna come to my next show, alright? I _promise,_ the next one."  
  
"But --" Her eyelids drifted shut, jaw jutting out to stop the onslaught of useless tears. "... why not _this_ one?"  
  
Her nose scrunched. An instant indication of hurt, so rarely with him at her mercy but always effective.  
  
There was a hand in her hair again, a finger tracing the shell of her ear as some blonde tufts were tucked behind it.  
  
"I gotta make sure all the jokes are right for my best girl, right?" he reasoned, high and heady with a need to explain. "Oh come on, don't cry. I wanna make sure everything is perfect before you see your old man on stage like we practiced."  
  
Arms folded over her chest, her shoulders so tightly wound in that she felt sure to collapse, Carrie rolled her eyes, fighting off a dumb sniffle.  
  
"You're gonna get to go to _every_ show after the first one," he promised. "And guess what?"  
  
"Mm."  
  
"Someone's gonna record it, and they'll make it into a tape, so you'll get to see how the show went as soon as I pick you up the Sunday after."  
  
Reddened eyes glared, unwilling to smile but unable to stop herself from doing so.  
  
"Like the tape of my concert?" she questioned, remembering the $5 VHS that sat on the uppermost pile of all their Murray Franklin recordings. He nodded, brows upturned and desperate.  
  
Two hands pressed to her face, brushing away her pitiful tears before they could convene at the underside of her chin. She nuzzled into the contact. Mad as she was, she missed it. This. Him. The conundrum that Anderson Avenue felt like home and safety was what she believed he might consider funny.  
  
A musical score played behind them, having gone on for some indecipherable amount of time. Carrie allowed herself the mercy of collapse against her father's chest again, her nose bumping the sinew of his neck as his arms joined around her.  
  
"You might not even wanna come to the show. I'm gonna run you ragged with my routine this week," he considered, teasingly. "And I'm gonna make sure to call you before and immediately after."  
  
She nodded against him, a finger inoffensively tracing the V-shape of the undone top button of his under-shirt. He dresser more smartly at home than other daddies she saw on TV, or in her friends' homes on rare occasions.  
  
"Were you writing jokes on that paper?" she asked, the hum of the moon and New York City lulling in her ears.  
  
"... Yeah," he said.  
  
 ** _Arthur, he does as he pleases_**  
 ** _All of his life his master's toys_**  
 ** _And deep in his heart, he's just_**  
 ** _He's just a boy_**  
  
Carrie shot up, her head turning wildly toward the TV. Before Murray Franklin's scarlet, gold, and royal blue curtains, a hefty man thrummed his guitar. Somebody off-screen was aiding him with a soulful piano.  
  
"That's you!" she exclaimed, an excited finger prodding into his chest. He grinned at her, laughing. She couldn't remember the last time it sounded real and devoid of hurt. "Daddy, that's _your name!"_  
  
"I guess it is," he smiled.  
  
She smiled back. Nothing could stand in the way of their enjoyment of each other's presence.  
  
"Can we dance?" she asked quietly, the undulations of her shoulders out of sync with each other at once peculiar and so very Carrie-ish.  
  
She liked dancing with him. She missed it. It had become scarce as she'd gotten a little bigger. Recently he'd taught her to hug his waist and stand on his toes without it hurting.  
  
Rare occasions like tonight called for him to pick her up while he still had the ability to. One hand hooked under her thigh, the other arm enclosing around her back. When he nuzzled his nose into her hair, she knew he smelled the tar of her disgusting shampoo. He kept himself close to her anyway. Her arms clung to his shoulders.  
  
 ** _Living his life one day at a time_**  
 ** _He's showing himself a pretty good time_**  
 ** _He's laughing about the way_**  
 ** _They want him to be_**  
  
"Y'know, Carrie, I think this song could be an omen. A good omen," he considered. She felt his sunken cheek squish into her head. His sway was lazy, lulling her into quiet and no more tears. "Do you know what an omen is?"  
  
"I think so," she tried tiredly. The horror fanatics that they were, she believed it had come up at least once in the fall VHS lineup at Mom's house.  
  
"It means a sign," he explained, reaching his hand up from her back to rest on her upper arm. Her fingers tightened around each other as he hiked her up against his hip.  
  
"I thought omens were only bad things."  
  
"Not always," he countered. She looked up at him curiously as the hand once again trailed up, taking hold of the shell of her ear. "When someone's talking about you, that's why your ears itch sometimes."  
  
"But my ear itches _now."_  
  
"Well it could be your momma," he considered. "At work, telling her coworkers what a great daughter she has. How she hopes this new kid is just like you."  
  
She knew that was a lie. She knew he knew. For politeness, she refrained from saying as such.  
  
"You know I'm gonna be making all my jokes about you. Might drive you crazy with an ear itch."  
  
"You'd better _not,"_ she laughed, joined by his own. One hand dared to unclasp from the other, instinctively tugging at his own ear.  
  
The mantra on the television continued, unable to wind to a stop. Even unsaid, she could hear the words buzzing in his chest -- _you are the sweetest thing I've ever seen, how beautiful, I love you, I love you, how did I do something so well, how, I love, I adore --_  
  
She tried to not drift her mind to the words having been spoken by someone else lately, more unpolished and teeming with dirt.  
  
"When will we get to Denver?" she asked, her thumb releasing the pressure on the shell of his ears.  
  
"Soon," he nodded, stroking her jaw.  
  
 ** _When you get caught between the moon and New York City,_**  
 ** _The best that you can do is fall in love._**  
  
\- - - -  
  
Carrie's insistence to sleep in her old room with her grandmother came with exceptions. Summers in Gotham were _stifling._  
  
Twenty minutes of sleep rendered Carrie more tired than her eleven o'clock bedtime. Not even the kicking off of her plaid pants helped. Her nana's arm draped over her back, rendering her skin hot and filmy under the aid of the blankets, a daub of sweat blotting her shirt between her shoulder blades.  
  
She hated waking up to feeling hands on her. It seemed as of late it didn't matter whose or where they were. It kicked her heart into overdrive regardless, her vocal cords tightening to near-incoherence.  
A glance was thrown to her sleeping grandmother as she trailed out of the bed, needing to breathe. From the kitchen, a fluorescent buzz from the stove's overhead light hummed soothingly in her harried brain. Auggie, rested on the armchair, flitted an ear against her feathery touch, craning his head up with a narrowed eye to nip at her finger.  
  
Careening past him, Carrie stood outside her father's bedroom, a meek finger knuckle rapping the door twice.  
  
At the lack of response, she shuffled on her tired feet, and tried again.  
  
 _"Yeah?"_ met her from behind the door, not sounding very tired at all.  
  
"Daddy, I need to sleep in your room."  
  
There was a stalling pause, a sigh to rival her cute whining tone, and then the groan of the floorboards.  
  
The door unlocked, her father standing just in the frame. Quite her opposite, he wore his pajama bottoms, but no shirt. Taking little notice to the downturn of his lips, Carrie rushed under the space of his left arm as it stayed connected to the doorknob.  
  
A thin dance of cigarette smoke pooled against the ceiling where Daddy held his right hand against the upper door frame. His head bowed.  
  
"What was _wrong?"_ he asked, and Carrie felt a flinch of guilt for the slightly sear of annoyance.  
  
"It's hot in Nana's room," she explained feebly. "... and I had a bad dream. I w -- I wanted to sleep in here with you."  
  
His head lifted. The weak lights of the kitchen bounced around their living room and hitting the sheen of sweat on his temples. Carrie's eyes kept in a game of ping pong between his face and his hand, which finally lowered and took the cigarette in his mouth. The sinews of his back took peculiar shadows, his winged scapula ready to tear free of the constraint of his overworked skin.  
  
"Alright," he said, the stick bouncing between his lips. "Just gimme a minute, Peanut."  
  
He trailed off. In his absence, Carrie hastily rummaged through their shared cabinets, peeling away her white sweat cloth for a more suitable tank top and shorts. A rainbow peace sign, tacky and old, sat proud on her chest. The top hem of the fabric was used to dabble the sweat from her forehead.  
  
She hopped in the bed, curling into herself on top of the heavy navy comforter.  
  
Daddy came back within minutes, a folded rag substituting for the last of the orange nub of the cigarette. Around his wrist, she noticed a ring of colored elastic.  
  
"C'mere, next to me," he implored, ground in quiet, and sat on the right edge of the bed. She crawled over to him.  
  
The hand raking through her hair, gruff as it was, submerged her in peace. The side of his hand flattening the expanses of stubborn streaks and pulling her hair into a loose ponytail (he was knowledgeable in various types thanks to her presence in his life) rivaled the serenity of her mother wringing the shampoo and hot water from her hair just a few nights earlier.  
  
The velveteen touches of her parents drew her as close to sleep as a siren's song.  
  
His hand graced the back of her neck. A shudder of chilled surprise ran through her as the cloth, cold and damp, pressed to her forehead.  
  
"Try to sleep with this," he encouraged. She retreated to the left half of the bed, angling on her right side to face him. The cloth soothed her temple.  
  
After a minute, "What did you dream about?"  
  
"Monster chasing me again," she explained. The thin green blanket from the couch was pulled up from the bottom edge of the bed, shrouding the two of them, her up to the neck, him to the chest.  
  
"So it was a scary dream," he assessed. Bustling closer, she nodded, the stray hairs of her head brushing his ribs. "D'you get dreams like this at Mom's house?"  
  
"Sometimes."  
  
 _All the time,_ she nearly said. _I wake up to more scary dreams._  
  
"What's your mom do?"  
  
"Told me to stop locking the door, so I won't wet the bed anymore," she explained. "Sometimes it's nice to lock the door, 'cause some ... she barges in sometimes so I get no privacy."  
  
There was a low chuckle, crackled with an emotion she couldn't place. It was not humor.  
  
"Sounds like your mom," he said. "Just stay close, Peanut. There's a strict 'no monster' policy when I'm in the room."  
  
She smiled at this, her eyes angled down over a bruise just above his navel. The both of them seemed to have the inclination to bruise from feather touches. She wondered if he'd gotten it from work last week -- if he went to work at all.  
  
She fell asleep before she thought to ask. The scents of musk and old cigarettes and the comfort of her father's arm as her pillow lulled her into dreams much more soothing than any she'd had in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Arthur and Carrie dance to is called Arthur's Theme :)

**Author's Note:**

> Since Joker canonically takes place in the 1980s, I got the image in my mind of Betty Gilpin from GLOW as Jocelyn. I don't know why but it fits perfectly.  
> https://uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/gettyimages-800018022.jpg
> 
> Also I want to wrap Carrie in a blanket and bubble wrap.  
> https://tr.web.img2.acsta.net/medias/nmedia/00/02/43/30/sam3.jpg


End file.
